Comparative Study of Slags Stabilized with Fly Ash and Dolime for Utilization in Base Course

Abstract

There is a growing need to replace natural aggregates in road construction with new, alternative materials owing to the scarcity of natural resources. On the other hand, generation of huge quantities of waste from industries like iron, steel, copper, and thermal power is resulting in shortages of disposal areas and causing serious environmental pollution. In this paper, important engineering properties—unconfined compressive strength, triaxial shear strength, elastic modulus, resilient modulus, and permanent strain characteristics—of copper slag, fine and coarse steel slag, and blast furnace slag stabilized with fly ash and dolime are investigated for their effective utilization in the base course of flexible pavements, and compared with those of conventional wet-mix macadam (WMM). Deviator stress at failure and elastic modulus of the slag/fly ash/dolime mixes obtained in the present study are much greater than those of the WMM. These mixes also exhibit higher resilient modulus and lower permanent strain than the WMM. The performance of various stress-dependent models for the prediction of resilient modulus is compared, and the model constants of these mixes for a three-parameter model are presented.