Water characteristic curve and permeability function of steel slag

Waste arising from construction and demolition constitutes one of the largest waste streams globally. Construction and maintenance of roads require a large volume of aggregates for use as base and sub-base material. Because of the cost of virgin aggregates, government and local companies are encouraging the use of recycled material in old pavement and construction material. One type of recycled material, steel slag could be used for several construction purposes, such as concrete, road subgrade, and railway ballast materials. In order to utilize steel slag in these constructions, the engineers need to understand the properties of material appropriately including its unsaturated properties. The objective of this project is to study the soil-water characteristic curve, unsaturated permeability and unsaturated shear strength of steel slag. Advanced laboratory testing was conducted to obtain these unsaturated properties. The results of study indicated that the steel slag has the same unsaturated properties as natural aggregate or gravel.