Eco-friendly recycled crushed glass for cushioning boulder impacts

Abstract

A large amount of waste glass is generated every year and contributes significantly to landfills. Large-scale physical model tests were carried out to study the dynamic response of recycled crushed glass (RCG) contained in gabion baskets and its performance against successive boulder impacts at energy levels of up to 70 kJ. The cushioning performance of RCG is compared with that of more conventional cushioning materials, including rock fragments and cellular glass aggregates. Results reveal that for the first impact, RCG can provide up to 144% and 128% reduction in the transmitted wall loads and boulder impact loads, respectively, when compared with cushion layers comprising rock fragments. It follows that by adopting RCG, practitioners could potentially reduce the recommended design load for impact by a single boulder by up to three times. Furthermore, the load-diffusion angle of RCG is three times larger than that of cellular glass aggregates. The observed trend in the diffusion angle implies that the transmitted load for RCG is distributed more uniformly on the barrier wall compared to cellular glass aggregates.