Use of Ultra-High-Performance Concrete to Produce Standard Coarse Aggregates

The present study proposes to develop and use an ultra-high-performance concrete (UHPC) to produce standardized coarse aggregates. To that end, production protocols were established to control particle size distribution, shape, porosity, and compressive strength aimed at railway ballast as an application example. The artificial aggregate was produced to mimic the characteristics of a natural aggregate of gneiss used as ballast in Brazil. The characterization results showed that the artificial aggregate exhibited similar characteristics to those of gneiss, especially density, compressive strength, micro-deval abrasion loss, and resilient modulus, which are important for the application adopted. Moreover, the UHPC aggregate behaved better than gneiss after wetting-drying cycles in weather-resistance tests.