$ 2.32

General characteristics of recycled concrete aggregates

Sustainability is becoming a hot topic more and more nowadays, and also the construction world is trying to find new ways to handle resources more cautiously. Using recycled concrete aggregates is one of the many options, and it’s an obvious one. Giving demolition waste a second life is a strong concept, but in order for this to actually become a common given, it is necessary to learn more about the characteristics of this material. Not so much the characteristics of pure recycled concrete aggregates interest us, but what the influence of this material in aggregate mixes is. Defining some general characteristics of mixes with a different composition can learn us more about what is possible with these materials.

By composing mixes of 100-0%, 80-20%, 60-40%, 40-60% and 20-80% of a natural limestone and recycled concrete aggregate, there is a varied amount of test specimen. The general assumption is that recycled aggregates are from a lower quality than natural aggregates. By executing a number of tests, this assumption is checked if it corresponds to the reality, and the extent to which this is the case.

As expected, the quality of aggregate mixes with recycled materials is less than pure natural aggregate mixes, but some results also tell us that the decrease in quality is not linear, which is remarkable and definitely positive. This tells us that substituting a certain percentage of natural aggregates might result in a quality that is sufficient for the applications, if it is taken into account in the calculation phase.

The general characteristics are in every way different, on some aspects more than others, but if more research is done into this field, higher quality applications can be discovered for these kinds of mixtures.