MONITORING THE PERFORMANCES IN REAL WORKING CONDITIONS OF C&D WASTE MATERIALS IN ROAD CONSTRUCTION USING EMBEDDED INSTRUMENTS

This paper reports the results obtained so far, of the research conducted to verify the compatibility of construction and demolition waste (C&D) as alternative materials for road constructions. Annually highway and construction industries consume a huge amount of aggregates deriving from quarries, causing considerable energy and environmental losses. Understand how this new type of materials behave on the physical and mechanical point of view is important to encourage and develop their use. Pavement material behaviour is affected by many factors (i.e., load magnitude, material properties and environmental conditions), therefore not only laboratory tests are important but especially evaluate mechanical performances in real working conditions (Rombi at al., 2010). For this purpose an experimental road, 30 m long and 4 m wide, was built. At three different depths a total of n°12 instruments were installed: 3 pressure cells to measure stresses and 9 Linear Variable Differential Transformers (LVDTs) to measure deformations. In situ tests were conducted for each layer during construction. At the end of the construction and after a year tests were repeated to verify the mechanical behaviour in the long term. The data were collected from the pressure cells and LVDTs under different load and speed magnitude. At this point of the research data are being analysed and compared, and the results reported on this paper. In the near future all the data collected will be used to calibrate a mathematical model in order to predict C&D performances in real working conditions. To be able to understand how pavement materials, no matter what type of material you are using C&D or natural aggregates, respond to traffic and environmental loading is fundamental when designing pavements and evaluating their performance.