Properties of fly ash stabilized haul road construction materials

ABSTRACT

Larger haul trucks are being used at surface mines in Canada thus requiring better haul roads to carry heavier loads. The availability of good quality aggregate to build haul roads is limited for prairie coal mines. However, most of these mines are located adjacent to coal-fired electrical power plants, which produce by-product fly ash as a waste. Fly ash can be used to increase strength and stiffness of soil and road bases.

Unconfined compressive strength tests conducted on various mixtures of fly ash, kiln dust, mine spoil, and coal seam partings showed that the cementing characteristics of unclassified fly ash from central Alberta coals was low. However, the addition of cement kiln dust, which is high in CaO, enabled the fly ash to exhibit significant cementing action.

Mixtures of fly ash, kiln dust, and mine spoil or coal seam partings had unconfined compressive strengths of about 1 MPa and elastic moduli of about 350 MPa after 14 to 28 days. This compares favourably with compacted mine spoil or coal seam partings which have estimated unconfined compressive strengths of less than 0.4 MPa and moduli of about 50 MPa. Thus fly ash stabilized mine spoil or coal seam partings were found to have potential for use in constructing haul road base and sub-base layers since maximum tire pressures on the running surface are less than 0.7 MPa.

KEYWORDS:

• Fly ash
• haul road
• surface mining