Cyclic Loading Behaviour of Compacted Waste Materials for Transport Infrastructure

Steel furnace slag (SFS) and coal wash (CW) are two common by-products from coal mining and steel industries in Australia. Rubber crumbs (RC) is a material derived from waste tyres contributing to environmental problems in most developed countries. Reusing and recycling these waste materials is not only economically beneficial and environmentally sustainable, but it also helps to address geotechnical problems such as track degradation. In this study, SFS, CW, and RC are blended to explore the feasibility of obtaining an energy absorbing capping layer with properties similar or superior to conventional subballast. To achieve this objective, the basic geotechnical properties, the stress-strain behaviour under monotonic and cyclic loading, and the mathematic insight into the SFS+CW+RC mixtures have been investigated in detail.