Sustainable pavement construction by the use of recycled glass

The construction of pavements is usually based on different national and international standards. As a result the pavement design all over the world normally consists of different granular base layers and different asphalt or concrete layers. The overall thickness of the pavement construction depends on many different parameters e.g. traffic loads, number of passes, and subgrade strength. Especially at the construction of pavements across soft soils large settlements occur which often results in damages to the pavement layers. Besides the improvement of the soft subgrade material by soil improvement methods, cut and cover construction or hydraulically bonded base layers the vertical loads on the soft subgrade can be reduced by the use of light infill materials. One of those materials can be called as glass foam gravel and is produced from recycled glass. As another alternative of the asphalt and concrete layers glass asphalt can be used. The main advantage of this product compared to asphalt and concrete is the permeability without any loss of bearing capacity. The use of both sustainable materials for the construction of pavements is described in the paper.