Alternative for Rock to Build Asphalt Road

What do you exclude from the label "rock"?

Why do you ask? Are rocks too hard to find? Chopped clamshells are another possibility, IIRC.

Price of hard rock is increasing in some part of the world. Even illegal mining is prohibited due to sudden change in climatic condition and depletion of water resources.However, demand for rock chips are increasing every day. so, I feel, one day rock deposits will be utilised for various purpose. what is next as an alternative material to make concrete, asphalt etc etc...

Crushed concrete is still rock.

Everything illegal is prohibited. You're not making sense. Why would rock cost anything? I mean the planet is made of it.

""everything illegal is prohibited."" Taht is only on paper in my location,and it is applicable only to commoners.In my location, those who have money,mussle power a.k.a mafia support and political support can do anything.I do not know the situation in your area.

What is a commoner?

These fellows know the meaning of commoner very well.

Well it is meaningless to me.

If it is as you say where ever you are................................quarry it yourself, cuts out the middle man, the mafia, the government, hell even the logistics of it becomes moot as you quarry where you need it.

So why bother us with this question? use crushed glass, use ground tires, bones, obsolete IC's, pipe cleaners, toothpicks, TEETH hell just about anything, seems like there are rules there but nobody plays by them anyway so why should you!!!!!!!

JMHO

Rant over!!

rock price is increasing due to extensive construction projects.

Any of those roads?

Frankly, the price of anything determines the viability of the project, Boss. And that means only the better ones ever get built.

I am thinking about depletion of water resources and climatic changes.geologists and medical professionals are studying in depth about after effects of excessive mining. Timing of rain change,change in ground water level, unknown diseases etc are some of them.I have seen all these after effects in some places. Do you have an alternate to hard rock (hard stone) which is naturally available in earth?

ps:- I am not a geologist or medical professional

In some areas of the world, rock is indeed hard to find. Bangladesh is one for sure, where they crush bricks for the road surface,

If we are asking about aggregates in the asphalt. Around here they use to use the slag in the coke mills. There is also glass. A lot of the recycled glass is used in asphalt.

If the bed the asphalt is to be put on. Then cement mixed with the soil.

Glass in most states is no longer used because the liquid asphalt doesn't adhere to it.

Provided the proportion of waste glass is below 15%, and the grain size is controlled there are no adverse effects to the incorporation of glass into asphalt. The angularity of ground glass compared with the roundness of sand to produces an asphalt with increased stability. Early installations in the US where up to 25% of glass was incorporated did suffer from stripping due to lack of adhesion. Your comment no longer applies to most countries worldwide and has never applied to Europe where 10% inclusion is the norm. With the addition of lime percentages above 15% do not suffer stripping but there are no real cost benefits in adding more cheap glass and some expensive lime rather than using stone.

Sub layers of road fill can incorporate up to 25% ground glass and the benefits of an angular grain shape are much greater.

It is no longer used here in the states at least not in the ones I've worked in (the New England states, mid atlantic, South Eastern, southern and south west.) the idea was pretty neat at the time because the streets would sparkle at night, but after about a month you would start seeing little pieces of broken glass all over the street. Causing havoc with keeping them clean. I haven't seen it used in since 96. There are too many better aggregates out there to waste the time or money.

If you could identify pieces individually as glass then it was not crushed into small enough particles. The glass used in UK roads is set just below the size of sand grains. The US obviously does not tax quarried materials as heavily as Europe. The EU objective is to reduce landfill as much as possible by recycling even if there is a price premium attached.

Pollution is not just about fossil fuels. Europe is big into recycling as many materials as possible. The US may be lagging behind on this, but as soon as your government wakes up to the idea that Joe public does not mind too much if they "tax the polluter", you will catch us up fast.

The original op was about finding atternatives for aggregates not for finding fillers or the replacement of sand. As I stated correctly glass is not a good aggregate for replacing stone. We in the state recycle glass for other more useful products like make other glass containers instead of using roads as our landfills.

It is all a matter of scale. If your state recycles only a small amount of glass then using it to make more glass containers is the best use of the cullet (the industry term for furness-ready scrap glass). I live a 3miles from St. Helens, the UK center for glass manufacture where at one time 22,000 people were employed, directly and a further 6000 indirectly in the glass industry. From the 1960's onwards there was major automation of the industry and now a few hundred employees produce more product than when employment was at its peak. Recycled glass has been used here for over 70 years, starting long before anybody thought of saving the planet. Now the amount of recycled glass available is so great that alternative uses have to be found, hence road fill, fibre-glass, shot blasting, bricks, counter tops, decorative flooring.

The US recycles about 34% of it's glass, the UK about 52%, Switzerland and Finland over 90%.

The recycled glass you use is only a fill probably only -50 sieve or less again your not answering the op he wants a replacement for the aggregate 1/4 and greater to use in asphalt so your information though interesting and we'll know is usless.

And then there were those tests done with recycled tire crumbs.

I was going to bring that up, but you beat me to it.

How did those tests work out once the rubber met the road? (Sorry, couldn't resist the 'multiple-meaning' pun, been a dreary way-too-much-thinking-inside-the-box week at the day job. What I would give for just one Nerf Warr around here to get people to lighten up.)

RUber is added as an administrator to the liquid asphalt to give it more elasticity and for it to last longer. It would last as a aggregate because of the heat. I also saw test studies in the early 2000 where if used as a sub base they have a tendency to catch fire.

Recycled mixed plastics?

Rails?

Ice?

Logs?

Model-makers use cardboard and plaster.

If you have no useful comments why do you bother contributing?

FDR, Full Depth Reclamation, seems to be catching on. Instead of hauling out the old road material and hauling in rock for the new road bed, cement is mixed several inches deep with what is in place, and/or broken asphalt or other material from previous road.

Cretain states are using a method called Rolumac which mixes liquid asphalt back into mix with the millings.

Is that when you plant the little rocks.

No, we start the little pebbles in the fall, and over the winter they mature into boulders.

We only have little rocks in Arkansas.....and Razorbacks

I have heard that some use ground up old tires....The hot setup is to get paid to recycle the tires that would ordinarily end up in landfill...that way you get paid to take the tires and grind them up.....you need to have the tires shredded though...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubberized_asphalt

This works as long as the metal from the tires is removed and no more than 20% is used in the mix.

you could try gold but that could get costly

Yep....

My first comment. Yep. I'm a lurker.

We had a big hail storm here last summer. Practically every house in my town of 2000 inhabitants got a "free" new roof... except me. We did ours this past summer. Some portions of the roof had 7, that's right, SEVEN layers of shingles on it. The 30 square we bought to replace the old roof weighed approximately 6,000 lbs. Once cleared of the old shingles, the house let out an audible sigh of relief and actually grew 3 inches (which was offset by the 3 inches of shingles removed)!

My point; couldn't old shingles be ground up and used to make new asphalt roads? Disposing of 40,000 pounds of shingles was by far the most costly portion of re-roofing. Seems there is a mint to be made there somewhere...

There are different grades of bitumen, some of which is also oxidized bitumen. The grade used for shingles and roofing felt is commonly bulked out with chalk, and modern shingles will have some polymer added. Mixing the different polymers creates problems when manufacturing the products. For instance combining SBS (styrene based polymer) and APP (polypropelene based polymer) causes the mix to go solid and it has to be removed from the mixer with a jack hammer. Your seven layers of shingles could have all manner of additives and no producer is going to take the risk of recycling it into asphalt. Old asphalt that is planed off the roads is usually recycled into batches of new asphalt. The proportion of old that can go into the mix is not high so some also goes to landfill. Note that asphalt that is used in pedestrian pavements is not recycled into road surfacing asphalt as it may also contain polymers.

I figured there was a reason. Thanks for the insight. Increased my odds of sleeping tonight by 7%.

Here in the states don't use shingles because of the chance of asbestos being in it. Millings from old roadways are very commonly used in asphalt mixes sometimes up to 20%. Millings or here in the States commonly called RAP is carefully regulated at the site so you know aggregate and asphalt % before you use it in the mix.

If soil not being considered as rock, there is a solution. Soil is mixed with water & made into a heavy type dough giving into a shape of 3''X5"X10" & burnt. These are known as bricks in this part of the world. They are generally used for construction of buildings. In 60's bricks were broken into pieces mixed with sand & cement (ratio determined by civ. enggs.) & water called concrete used to construct roads. So, bricks can be an alternative to rock.

Bricks and old concrete now in modern times my be mixed in with aggregatesome for the sub base but it's usually only a certain percentage because it won't handle the compaction.

strong bricks are made from clay which is available in paddy fields.Sand bricks are inferior to clay bricks.Even strong clay brick can be cut in to two piece with the help of brick trowel after couple of hours water treatment.I don't think, brick can withstand the load exerted by modern heavy duty trailer trucks in long run.

May be. It was done in the 60's & is not practiced now. Also may be that in those days there were not heavy trucks. I saw 5-7 tons trucks running. Now I see 40-50 ton trucks are running on rock+ asphalt roads. I have seen that heavy raining or water lodging on the roads reduces the lifespan of asphalt roads. I have heard that enggs. are again thinking of constructing concrete roads here though not started yet.

I saw something not too many years ago, about a new brick making technology: uses only concentrated solar energy, but this is a process to simply sinter sand together, similar to 3-D printing where the pinpoint focus is scanned over the sand (or the sand form is moved around), and only the top layer of sand melts. More sand added sticks to the molten sand, and the "brick" is built up. Amazingly, the projection was for a reasonably high production rate. There are a great number of sand piles in this world to play this in, so who wants to volunteer for first go?

Might be that it is a new & good technology. CC roads were reinforced by steel rods. In this technology reinforcement would be done with what material to bear heavy loads? This is just for curiosity.

Most concrete roads are not reenforced with steel. They are slip form. Short 2-3 ft steel dowels are used to hold just together the strength comes the type of concrete used. Concrete has its weaknesses also especially in extreme conditions tropical or extreme cold.

I suppose the solar brick road (as opposed to the yellow brick road from "The Wizard Of Oz") would only need typical aggregate road bed with the bricks set on top, probably not the best for high payload, high throughput traffic. If the "bricks" were actually all one large composite brick, I suppose the problem would be stress crack failure.

Anyway, I will attempt to locate any possibly links and post them here.

That is an interesting idea that could be very useful.

.

It seems like there would be significant problems with stresses/brittleness due to expansion/contraction and cooling rates inherent with repeated thin layer melting common to most additive manufacturing processes. Inconsistency in the sand would seem to aggravate that problem. But perhaps I am not looking at this in the right way.

.

Have any relevant links?

I will put forth what I found within ten minutes:

http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2011-06/video-3d-printing-glass-using-sand-and-solar-power

The above link is the main one.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2010/11/24/207081/video-solar-furnace-melts-rock/

This link shown above is illustrating a very high temperature ~3500 °C. Still not hot enough to make magnesium from magnesium oxide. Japanese figured out how to do this using HELIOS solar-pumped Nd:Cr:YAG laser with about 8% efficiency.

http://nextbigfuture.com/2014/10/solar-powered-lasers-for-magnesium.html

Above is link to magnesium production ideas of the Japanese Institue of Technology.

http://www.prosolartec.com/prosolartec-news/

This link intended for metal casting enthusiasts, it actually vaporized the steel before they could make their minds up to pour it.

I forgot to add.. I have seen brick layered roads in some places.It is still functioning well.But they did the work only in water clogged areas.I really do not know the ingredients of those bricks as the colour of bricks are grey (similar to cement colour).

Yeah, it's called GRAVEL.

what is the name of debris obtained after sieving of river sand? that is also comes under gravel family?

I think bluegrass would be productive, but it's really a matter of personal taste.

I have noticed a trend towards planting grass in the median strips around Chicago.

A big improvement over the 3-4' of buckled concrete or asphalt supplied by General Dynamics/Material Service.

FHWA frowns at the use of grass medians because it doesn't have any restrictions to cross overs. Which is a major safety issue on highways. Many states are getting away from them.

I suppose your right, especially if people stop to pick/smoke it.

OMG we are running out of rock? OMG, OMG. ROFLMAO running out of rock. You are never going to find a suitable replacement for rock in road building, so give up, and absorb the cost of it.

Yes there are - but these will be too expensive as compared to quarried rocks:

1. Iron blast furnace clinkers evenly sized.

2. Broken-out old concrete evenly sized.

3. Scrapped old roads metal evenly sized.

4. Broken red-sand baked brick bats evenly sized.

:)

Loops like we have someone without a clue in the design of asphalt or roadways.

WWhat kind of moron marked this as a ga. First of all asphalt pavement is done with a mix design meaning your using many different sieves sizes to come up with the correct compaction on the roadway none of the material can be used as an aggregate. Only an idiot would think metal is a good idea to add to asphalt.

You diffently can tell most of you aren't civil engineers and in no way do you have highway construction experience.

Another great one using bricks to build highways are you crazy have you ever driving on a road made of bricks. To you have any idea how long that would take. Not a lot of thinking going on out there.

I did not mark that as good answer but your tone is a bit strident. First of all blast furnace clinkers are not metal, it is hard slag, and comes in various sizes. I think it has been used before in road construction, as an admixture with Portland or pozzolana cements. Not much to do with asphalt roads though. Steel furnace slag is a really bad idea, apparently, due to the presence of hard core CaO and MgO that take various long amounts of time to hydrate, and result in swelling, a really really bad idea, and forbidden in most if not all construction of roads or anything else.

I am not a civil engineer, but I stayed at a Holiday Inn last night, so lighten up.

http://books.google.com/books?id=5x37kwHspVoC&pg=PA102&lpg=PA102&dq=blast+furnace+clinker+in+road+construction&source=bl&ots=OKXyox87bH&sig=liCE6IIByWExPfT-VURWG8SU1l0&hl=en&sa=X&ei=YDU9VJjiN4K9yQSipIKoDA&ved=0CCAQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=blast%20furnace%20clinker%20in%20road%20construction&f=false

Actually, I would not recommend listening to any type of music whilst building a road.