Tunnel Muck Recycling for Road Construction – A Case Study in Vietnam

In rock tunnel construction projects, the big volume of blasted rock muck gives burdens to the cost estimate and the environmental impacts. Tunnel muck recycling is an effort toward the sustainable development when replacing partly a non-renewable resource by a solid waste. In Deo-Ca road tunnel construction project located between Phu-Yen and Tuy-Hoa province (Vietnam), blasted rock was manufactured to become the recycled graded aggregates for constructing the road pavement and the tunnel lining. After recalling some fundamentals of the tunnel muck recycling, the paper introduced the case study on a recycled muck aggregate manufactured from Deo-Ca tunnel excavation. The possibility of utilizing the aggregate for the road base, sub-base and embankment were evaluated through the grain composition analysis. Based on the results of the trial road embankment construction, two mechanical characteristics were examined and the recommended construction parameters were proposed as the prototype for the large scale execution in some segments of the southern approach road of Deo-Ca tunnel.