Production of a New Base Material for Load-Bearing Water-Storing Road

Abstract

In this work, a porous road base material was studied for a load-bearing water-storing road. According to the performance analysis, asphalt and ordinary portland cement did not work well on the load-bearing water-storing road as base binder materials. Therefore, a metakaolin-based (MK) geopolymer was used to produce a concrete composed of geopolymer and open-graded aggregate (CGOA) as a new road base material to replace traditional cement-treated aggregate. The geopolymer gel adhesive ability, geopolymer surface cracks and internal pores, CGOA water stability, CGOA water storage rate, and CGOA unconfined compressive strength (UCS) were indicators to get the optimal formulation and production process. Mixing open-graded aggregates with a geopolymer gel [Si/Al mole ratio (MR) of 2, Al/Na MR of 0.85–1.00, and H2O/Na2O MR of 14–16], and then membrane curing for more than 60 h at 20°C could produce the desired CGOA. It was designed to make it possible for the road to act as a superior reservoir while bearing traffic loads to reduce waterlogging in urban areas.