Utilization of building debris for road construction in the Northern Province of Sri Lanka

Abstract

Northern region of Sri Lanka is undergoing a massive infrastructure development especially in the road sector development during a shorter period. Northern region emerged with few new problems such as scarcity of construction material and disposal of construction debris. Roads are major consumers of aggregate and soil and the effect of transport cost of material is more than 50 % of total construction cost. In order to curtail the construction cost and reduce the industrial waste disposal, experimental studies were carried out in this research on selected building debris such as concrete, random rubble masonry, concrete block and plaster to find out the possibility of using building waste as road construction material. It has been observed that the random rubble masonry debris can be directly used for road base construction after removing cement plaster however; crushed debris can replace the soil for construction of roads after adding plastic particles.