ABSTRACT
ABSTRACT: Concrete is the second largest consumed material by humans worldwide. In this modern era, cement concrete pavements are in demand when compared with bituminous pavements in highway projects. In the recent era of green technology, waste utilization in the production of concrete, especially for pavements, has become the major concern and is the focus of the present study. Blast Furnace Slag (BFS) is one of the major wastes produced from steel processing plants around the globe. An enormous quantity of BFS is produced from these steel plants, but a very little quantity is utilized in different civil engineering applications. BFS can be utilized as a fine aggregate for the replacement of sand to produce concrete mainly for pavements. Sand, itself being a natural resource, has many technical limitations in terms of quality for the production of pavement concrete. In this paper, a comprehensive experimental program was considered to study the effect of gradation of BFS on pavement concrete when BFS was replaced with natural riverbed sand. In this regard, BFS was graded as per four zones of gradation of the Rajkot city area. The graded samples of BFS were utilized for the production of concrete to evaluate its different properties. Based on the results of the experiment, variations in the properties of pavement concrete were analyzed and the effect of the gradation of BFS on pavement concrete was studied. The results indicate that unlike sand, BFS provides more flexibility in terms of design mix when utilized as a fine aggregate in pavement concrete.
