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Recycled Materials & Sustainable Engineering in the Highway Environment
Jeffrey Melton, Research Assistant Professor of Civil Engineering, Outreach Program Coordinator, Recycled Materials Resource Center, University of New Hampshire
February 2, 2007
Abstract
Sustainable or green engineering incorporates design, materials and procedures that result in a cost-effective, quality product while at the same time minimizing the environmental impact and risks to human health associated with the engineering process. Sustainable engineering is usually discussed in terms of green or sustainable buildings, yet infrastructure projects such as highway construction and maintenance require a tremendous amount of resources, so the application of sustainable engineering practices to highway construction will allow engineers to design high quality, cost-effective roads while reducing pollution and energy consumption. To understand the scale of these engineering projects, consider that highway construction uses about 350 million tons of material each year. In addition, between 350 and 850 million tons of byproduct and secondary use materials are generated each year in the United States. These secondary use materials include tires, asphalt shingles, crushed concrete, reclaimed asphalt pavement, coal combustion products, foundry sands and slags. Using these secondary use materials in road construction allows engineers to conserve high quality virgin materials while finding a high value application for materials that might otherwise go into a landfill. While recycling materials into highway projects seems like a reasonable idea, it has proven to be technically challenging. Some projects have been spectacular failures, leading to expensive remediation and reconstruction efforts. In 1998, the Federal Highway Administration formed the Recycled Materials Resource Center (RMRC) to serve as their central clearing house for information related to recycled materials. This talk will provide an overview on what has been learned over the past nine years with regard to recycled materials, and what the future holds for sustainable engineering in the highway environment.
Biography
Jeffrey Melton received a B.A. in Physics in 1991 from Hamilton College, an M.S. in Ocean Engineering in 1994 from the University of New Hampshire, and a Ph.D. in Engineering Sciences in 1999 from the Thayer School of Engineering, Dartmouth College. From 2000-2002 he was a Research Hydraulic Engineer with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers at the Coastal and Hydraulics Laboratory in Vicksburg, MS. He presently is a Research Assistant Professor of Civil Engineering at UNH and the Outreach Program Director for the Recycled Materials Research Center. His research interests include the stabilization of contaminated soils and sediments, triaxial testing of granular materials and the beneficial uses of recycled and reclaimed materials.