Assessment of municipal solid waste incineration bottom ash as a potential road material

Municipal solid waste incineration bottom ash is atypical of granular material and it is significantly important to investigate the engineering properties of bottom ash used as aggregate of embankments and road base, especially the shear strength and deformation characteristics. The laboratory tests were performed on engineering properties of bottom ash from an incineration plant in China. The results show that the grain sizes of bottom ash focus on the range of 2–50 mm and is well-graded. Bottom ash can be reused as a non-hazardous material. Both unsaturated and saturated bottom ash appear to be plastic failure, and have friction angle and cohesion. The maximum friction angle and cohesion of unsaturated bottom ash are 47.8° and 56 kPa, respectively, which has higher shear strength and better stability than coarse sand and gravel. The elastic modulus of bottom ash increases with maximum deviator stress and bottom ash has better resistance capacity to deformation.