Characterization of steel slag and its suitability as a sustainable material for road construction

Abstract

The construction and maintenance of asphalt pavements consume a lot of aggregates. Consequently, the environment and the ecology are being destroyed very fast due to the excessive quarrying of natural resources of aggregate. This arises the need to find and develop new alternate materials as a substitute for natural aggregate (NSA) so that the natural resources can be saved. This paper presented the experimental investigation to find the application of induction furnace steel slag (SSA) which is a waste generated from the steel industry, in place of NSA for producing asphalt mixture. The physical, mechanical, and morphological characteristics of SSA were determined to know its suitability as a sustainable material for road aggregates. ImageJ software was used to study the morphology of SSA and NSA. It was found that SSA has comparable physical, mechanical, and morphological characteristic to NSA. The SSA can substitute NSA effectively as road construction aggregate.