Graduation Year

2004

Document Type

Thesis

Degree

M.S.C.E.

Degree Granting Department

Civil Engineering

Major Professor

Alaa K. Ashmawy, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Manjriker Gunaratne, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Rajan Sen, Ph.D.

Keywords

waste materials, database management system, industrial byproducts, Microsoft access, compendium

Abstract

Although there has been a rise in the use of recycled materials in highway and geotechnical systems, many tons of potentially useful industrial and domestic by-products are still being discarded in the United States each year. While extensive research has been conducted to investigate the use of recycled materials in engineering applications, the dissemination of the findings is often limited. The problem is compounded by the lack of a single resource containing relevant engineering and environmental characteristics of each material; the tendency of the researchers to publish their findings in technical reports rather than archived publications; and the wide discrepancies among local and state environmental regulations and acceptability. A relational database is proposed as a method to improve implementation of recycled material research. A comprehensive review is conducted on data available for a wide variety of recycled materials and their usage in highway and geotechnical applications. Mechanical and environmental data and information from case histories are organized into approximately 10 tables in a relational database management system. More than 30 parameters, including engineering properties, availability and cost, are recorded for 23 materials in a highly-organized compendium. Through a simple user interface, a vast amount of data can be sorted to implement a recycled material program based on historic and current data. The DBMS is updatable and the design is amendable to account for future expansion.

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