Sustainable Shotcrete with Crushed Waste Glass

Abstract

There is an ever-increasing amount of waste glass generated worldwide that is currently sent to landfill, and has a high potential for re-use. In Australia alone, the consumption of glass is 1.36 million tonnes, with the state of New South Wales producing the highest amount. Traditional landfilling and stockpiling of waste glass are not an environment-friendly solution, and the re-use of waste glass has become an important research topic in Australia and worldwide. This Project employs an experimental study to estimate waste glass re-cycling in shotcrete production. Mechanical strength and fracture properties of the new mix designs are compared against the controlled mixes at 0% waste glass inclusions. From the results, no impaired performance was recorded by substituting sand with crushed waste glass even at a high percentage ratio of up to 100%. While further research is needed, the promising early results highly encourage the applicability of crushed waste glass for sustainable shotcrete design, a topic that is yet relatively under-researched.

Shear Strength and Consolidation Behaviour of Kaolin Clay Reinforced with a Granular Column Backfilled with Crushed Waste Glass

“…The everescalating volumes of waste glass could substitute natural and quarried (manufactured) sand in various geotechnical construction applications (Kazmi et al 2020a, b;Kazmi et al 2019). Both materials possess a comparable chemical composition, with crushed waste glass (CWG) showing geotechnical parameters similar to those of traditional construction sands Kazmi et al 2021;Serati et al 2021). The Mohs Hardness value of crushed waste glass typically lies around 5.5 (Omoding et al 2021;Pahlevani and Sahajwalla 2018;Riding et al 2018;Sanij et al 2019), while that of silica sand/gravel generally lies between 6 and 7 (James and Broad 1983;Koppatz et al 2011;Wille and Naaman 2013).…”