Bridges

The shortage of traditional construction materials and the escalating problem of waste generation pose significant challenges across multiple industries. Limited access to natural aggregates can negatively affect the concrete industry.

Besides, wastes from consumer goods, construction, and industrial processes pose significant environmental challenges and overuse of landfills due to their large volumes, slow decomposition rates, and potential for hazardous leachates. Addressing these twin issues, using waste materials in concrete presents a potential direction for advancing material technology. This study evaluates the feasibility of using recycled crushed glass and recycled concrete aggregates as aggregate replacements in concrete through physical and chemical material characterisation tests in accordance with existing specifications.

Furthermore, this study evaluates material performance within concrete by assessing fresh concrete properties, including workability, air content, and fresh density, as well as hardened concrete mechanical properties, specifically compressive and flexural strength. It has been found that increasing the recycled material replacement ratio correlates with increased concrete workability and apparent air content. Conversely, fresh and hardened density, along with mechanical properties, decrease with the incorporation of recycled materials. Nevertheless, the observation that all recycled mixtures achieved substantial 28-day compressive strength of 37 MPa and flexural strength of 5 MPa.

The results of this research provide valuable insights to engineers, policymakers, and industry stakeholders to understand better infrastructure solutions incorporating waste materials that are more sustainable and cost-effective.