Mechanical performance of roller compacted concrete with recycled concrete aggregates

Because the recycling of construction and demolition waste (CDW) has been deemed to be a priority, the use of a recycled aggregate has been widely demonstrated as a sustainable contribution among different materials applied in civil projects. Roller compacted concrete (RCC) applications offer technical, economic and ecological solutions in many civil construction projects. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, there has been little research on the use of RCC with a coarse recycled aggregate that does not originate from pavement. This research evaluates the use of recycled concrete aggregates (RCA) from a CDW recycling plant in RCC mixtures. Four series of RCC mixtures were produced with different cement contents (110, 175, 250 and 350 kg/m3). Each series consisted of three mixtures with different RCA incorporation ratios (0%, 50% and 100%) of natural coarse aggregates, thus producing 12 RCC mixtures to evaluate the effect on the compaction, the mechanical and physical properties while highlighting a new laboratory casting method for flexural strength and drying shrinkage tests. Based on the obtained results, the use of coarse RCA in RCC production is feasible at a replacement level of 100% when using these materials in road pavement bases.