Characterisation of Foundry Sand Waste Material for Road Construction

Different types of waste materials viz. copper slag, zinc slag, steel slag, manganese slag, phosphogypsum slag, cinder, red mud, kimberlite, lime sludge, foundry sand, coal ash, jarofix, jarosite, manganese slag, marble dust etc. are being generated in huge quantity as a bye product from the different industries. Presently, utilization of these waste materials is much more crucial and concern in India due to large amount of production and having very limited application. Foundry sand is one of such waste material produced from foundry industries spreded all over the country. The annual production is about 3 million tons from different foundry industries in India. The unutilized accumulated material is about 25 million tons. The material was collected from foundry industry, Ahmadabad (Gujarat) and characterization was carried out to study its application in the construction of embankment, subgrade and shoulder layers of road. Physical, chemical and geotechnical characterization were carried out considering the application in road construction. The paper discusses about the laboratory test results and development of design specification of its suitability in the road construction. It is observed that foundry sand is a coarse grained material having sand size particles. It can be used in the construction of embankment/subgrade and shoulder layers after modification of geotechnical properties.
A K Sinha, M Vinoth, S R Shankar, V G Havanagi, Scientists, CSIR-Central Road Research Institute, New Delhi, India