• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.27 no.7
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• pp.17-33
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• 2011

Recently, the utilization of recycled aggregates for backfilling a power transmission pipeline trench has been considered due to the issues of eco-friendly construction and a lack of natural aggregate resource. It is important to identify the physical and thermal properties of domestic recycled aggregates that can be used as a backfill material. This paper evaluated thermal properties of concrete-based recycled aggregates with various particle size distributions. The thermal properties of the recycled aggregates and river sand provided by local vendors were measured using the transient hot wire method and the transient needle probe method after performing the standard compaction test. The needle probe method considerably overestimated the thermal resistivity of recycled aggregates especially at the dry of optimum water content because of experiencing disturbance while the needle probe is being inserted into the specimen. Similar to silica sand, the thermal resistivity of recycled aggregates decreased when the water content increased at a given dry density. Also, this paper evaluated some of the existing prediction models for the thermal resistivity of recycled aggregates with the experimental data, and developed a new prediction model for recycled aggregates. This study shows that recycled aggregates can be a promising backfill material substituting for natural aggregates when backfilling the power transmission pipeline trench.