ISBN: 978-1-5396-2645-9 First International Conference on Recent Innovations in Engineering and Technology (ICRIEAT-2016) 28 ASSESSMENT OF INDUSTRIAL WASTES AS A ROAD CONSTRUCTION MATERIAL: A REVIEW 1 N. Gangadhara Reddy, 2 Sarath Chandra, 3 B. Hanumantha Rao 1 Research Scholar, School of Infrastructure, IIT Bhubaneswar-752050 2 Asst. Professor, Dept. of Civil Engineering, Christ University, Bangalore -560029 3 Asst. Professor, School of Infrastructure, IIT Bhubaneswar-752050 E-mail: 1 gn11@iitbbs.ac.in , 2 sarathchandra.k@christuniversity.in , 3 bhrao@iitbbs.ac.in Abstract - The scarcity of conventional natural materials and the jeopardized environment have been compelling the tendency towards evolution of new or alternate materials and resources to be incorporated in sustainable infrastructure development. The inclusion of such materials entails several secondary and tertiary materials. Indeed, there is a strong thrust to investigate the feasibility of locally available industrial waste materials to replace the conventional construction materials. In India, vast network of existing industries spread across length and breadth of the country and many more to come in the near future, are certainly going to generate millions of tonnes of variety of waste and by-product materials. The pollution and disposal problems can be minimised to greater extent by properly utilising these materials in civil engineering applications. Several types of waste/by-product materials have already been investigated, assessed, and evaluated for utilization and practice in the field. In this paper, assessment of different waste materials produced by various industries was reviewed for ascertaining their suitability in the construction of rural roads, embankments, and subgrade layers. Physical, chemical and geotechnical properties of these waste materials have been critically evaluated for this purpose. From the results, it has been observed that most of the materials have potential to be selected as source materials for embankment and as a construction material in roads. Materials like steel furnace slag and zinc slag found to have their useful in partial replacement of aggregate for the construction of sub-base and base layers. Index Terms – Road materials, Industrial wastes, Waste utilisation, Geotechnical properties I. Introduction Industrialisation is most essential for the development of any country and necessary for the society. The major ill effect of industrialisation is the generation of large volume of by-products or wastes, and these wastes cause an environmental pollution problem in the surrounding disposal area. The utilisation of industrial wastes in infrastructure is fantastic fascination with industrialised and developing countries for sustainable development. Extensive use of natural aggregates in construction projects has lead to drastic depleting these resources. Where aggregates have been in high demand, insufficient conventional materials and standardization of the environment concern causes to search for various substitutions, including that of industrial wastes. Industrial waste finds great potential in engineering applications when handled and utilized properly to the required standards. Such utilizations are commonly based on technical, economical, and ecological considerations. In India, vast network of industries can be found in numerous areas of the country and several of the new industries are under establishment stage, leading to generation of variety of existing and new waste types in huge quantity. However, the existence of these materials always poses a serious problem to surrounding environment. Use of waste materials like copper slag, zinc slag, steel slag, jarosite, phospho-gypsum, red mud, foundry sand, and coal ash in road construction would certainly solve this problem to an extent and would definitely provide an alternative to conventional materials. Also, the limited use of these materials creates an enormous heap of waste dumps inside the plant premises which leads to environmental pollution. Al-Jabri et al. (2006) studied the effect of 5% replacement of Portland cement by copper slag in the concrete mix. Havanagi et al. (2012) studied the feasibility of copper slag in the construction of a road with or without stabilisation. Copper slag could be used as a replacement of fine aggregate in bituminous concrete [3]. Barna et al. (2004) studied the effect of partial substitution of sand with zinc slag in the road construction. Fig 1. Waste generation in India by various sources and a variety of industries (After Rajesh et al. 2015)