Recycled Concrete Slab gains importance as it protects environmental resources

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Much of the U.S. research focused on using crushed, hardened concrete as an aggregate inside fresh concrete has been in major road paving. Work on this matter started with a major endeavor in the 1980s in Minnesota. Regrettably, the majority of the investigation focused on using recycled concrete aggregate (RCA) as a base material to the pavement.

But in other regions of the world, many recognize RCA as a valuable aggregate source when suitably intregated into the mix design process. For example, Japan has used RCA for more than 20 years in structural concrete applications.

RCA can be used actually in structural concrete. Dr. A. Ghani Razaqpur, a professor and chair of the Civil Engineering Department at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, gave a presentation at the 2008 Concrete Technology Forum, sponsored by NRMCA in May in Denver. Razaqpur disputes the belief that concrete (plain or reinforced) prepared with RCA has inherently mediocre short- and long-term components. He supported his claim by highlighting the outcome contained in the paper, "The Key to the Design and Construction of High Quality Structural-Grade Recycled Aggregate Concrete."

Razaqpur described how his team examined 14 different mix designs using RCA. They examined fresh and hardened components (slump, fresh and hardened density, elastic modulus, compressive strength, stress-strain correlation, creep, and shrinkage) and compared the outcome to comparable reinforced concrete prepared with fresh structural concrete.

The outcome of his work is a unique mix-proportioning approach for concrete made with coarse recycled concrete aggregate, in which RCA is regarded as a two-phase material comprising mortar and natural aggregate. The residual mortar in RCA is considered part of the overall mortar (fresh plus remaining mortar) in the mix. "By testing an broad number of specimens, we have demonstrated that the projected procedure would result in generating high-quality, structural-grade concrete, with predictable outcome," said Razaqpur.

Razaqpur hopes this new approach to mix proportioning will promote using RCA in structural concrete.

At the same event, Bill Palmer, senior engineer at Total Construction Consultants, a Boulder, Col.-based consulting firm, presented a number of supplementary resources for information on using recycled aggregates in concrete. He listed some organizations that can present help and technological information:

The first occasion I'd seen one, was outside a restaurant where I lived and they did a pretty high-quality job, using the pieces of an aged sidewalk, resourcefully. I never seen anything like this before and like most of us know, there is a first point for everything. Building concrete stairs by means of recycled materials got me thinking regarding other things that we could build with recycled building products.

People aren't just using recycled concrete for stairways, they're using them for undersized retaining walls. Recycled concrete retaining walls and stairways can be designed from slight to big sections of ruined sidewalks and driveways.
Simply place the ruined pieces into attractive designs, until you have something that functions as a flight of stairs. Start from the substructure and work your way up, until you have created a beautiful recycled concrete stairway.

If you are planning on building a retaining wall out of old concrete, simply stack these materials on top of each other, until you have produced the retaining wall, you envisioned. I don't recommend building retaining walls higher than twenty four ins with these types of materials.

Article Source: http://depositarticles.com/

Recycled Concrete Reinforced Concrete

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