Performance Evaluation of fly ash Composite Material in Mine Haul Road

Abstract

Heavy large capacity haul trucks are being increasingly used in opencast coal mines to meet the power demand now-a-days. These trucks require well-designed haul roads. For excavation of coal, opencast mines displace large amount of overburden material as waste. The current fly ash production is about 180 MT that will rise to about 225 MT by 2017 in India. This paper reports the detailed laboratory investigations carried out on development of fly ash composite materials with mine overburden, clinker and evaluation of their suitability for haul road. Proctor compaction tests, Unconfined Compressive Strength (UCS) tests, California Bearing Ratio (CBR) tests and P wave velocity tests were carried out at different curing periods. The stress-strain behavior of haul road with developed FCMs was evaluated. The composite with 62% fly ash, 30% overburden and 8% clinker exhibited adequate strength value for the haul road application.