Use of Waste/Recycled Material as Insulation in Road Construction

• Author / Creator

  Seyedeh Negar Tavafzadeh Haghi

• Pavements in cold regions are prone to frost damages during winter as a result of prolong sever below zero temperature. Frost heave can negatively affect the performance and ride quality of the road. At the end of the frost season, when thawing begins in the sublayers, pore water pressure builds up in the subgrade soil. This reduces the resilient modulus of the subgrade considerably and degrades the structural integrity of the pavement. Reducing the depth of frost penetration into the pavement structure can enable design engineers to decrease the thickness of the base/subbase layers; hence, reduce the use of natural aggregate and advance towards a more economical and sustainable design. Insulating the pavement foundation is one strategy to reduce heat loss from the pavement structure and maintain pavement subgrade temperatures above freezing during the winter months. While the number of test roads that are designed and constructed for in-situ measurement and evaluation of pavement performance are limited, there is a lack of knowledge on the effect of using new and recycled material on pavement. This research is designed to conduct a state-of-the-art investigation on the effect of using waste/recycled materials for insulation. As part of the research, controlled tests were performed at the full-scale test road of University of Alberta’s Integrated Road Research Facility (IRRF), located in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. The IRRF test road has three monitoring sections with insulation made of bottom ash (100 cm) and two different thicknesses of polystyrene boards (5 cm and 10 cm), and a control section (CS) with no insulation. The sections are fully instrumented across the depths of the pavement. In this research, the effects of using insulation layers on the thermal regime of the pavement is investigated and the effectiveness of each insulation layer is quantified. The thermal and moisture regime of the pavement structure over time are used to divide a year into freezing, thawing and non-freeze- thaw periods. The thermal and moisture variation in different seasons can affect the loading characteristics of the pavement layers over time. In an attempt to quantify the impact of seasonal changes (fluctuation of different layers modulus) on the overall strength of the pavement, Falling Weight Deflectometer (FWD) tests were carried out on the IRRF test road and the results are compared with the temperature and moisture regime in the pavement. The time history data collected from field FWD tests is used to identify the characteristic response of different sections. The structural behavior of each section is evaluated and the long term performance of each section is quantified in terms of fatigue cracking occurrence on the pavement using the elasto-plastic and stress-strain theories. To investigate the cost effectiveness of using insulation materials, the capital construction cost of the insulated roads, along with substituting the subgrade material with high quality granular base course (GBC) material is calculated. Recommendations are provided for optimum thickness of insulation material based on the distance and frost depth of the road from the location of the insulation material sources An essential part of this research is the creation of a finite element model for a better prediction of temperature changes in the insulated pavement system. The model has been calibrated using field data collected in this research. In order to develop a predictive model, it is necessary to incorporate laboratory test results on material characteristics in different well-controlled environmental conditions. The model is constructed in the Geo-Studio software. Based on this research, it can be concluded that, bottom ash as a waste material can be used as an insulation layer in road construction. Bottom Ah, can effectively decease the frost penetration, while it provides a favorable load bearing capacity and pavement performance during the critical thaw weakening season.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Optimization
  • Pavement
  • Bottom ash
  • Insulation layer
  • Polystyrene
  • Frost depth

• Graduation date

  Spring 2019

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Doctor of Philosophy

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/r3-ss7c-1t95

• License

  Permission is hereby granted to the University of Alberta Libraries to reproduce single copies of this thesis and to lend or sell such copies for private, scholarly or scientific research purposes only. Where the thesis is converted to, or otherwise made available in digital form, the University of Alberta will advise potential users of the thesis of these terms. The author reserves all other publication and other rights in association with the copyright in the thesis and, except as herein before provided, neither the thesis nor any substantial portion thereof may be printed or otherwise reproduced in any material form whatsoever without the author's prior written permission.