The use of recycled glassfoam aggregates for lightweight embankment

Embankment overload on high compressive soils can produce significant settlements as to require the design of an appropriate soil treatment, including load compensation, aimed to hold the stress-strain state present in the soil when undisturbed. The use of lightweight materials can help to solve this problem avoiding the replacement of large volumes of material or the need for expensive structural solution. In this regards the use of glassfoam recycled aggregates appear to be a promising and ecofriendly possibility to significantly reduce the settlement of the embankment base. Those recycled material, produced from the unrecovered waste of glasses, are nowadays extensively used as thermal insulator for building foundation. In this paper some preliminary results are presented regarding the possibility to use glassfoam aggregates for lightweight road and airport embankment construction, analyzing results from two different samples produced by the Misapor A/G. Results are mainly focused on the attitude of crushing, compactability, bearing capacity, shear resistance and on-site performances and appear to be encouraging both from environmental and technical point of view.