Overview of mechanical degradation of aggregates, related standards, and the empirical relations of the parameters

Abstract

One of the main products of the mining industry is crushed stone, which is an essential material in structure construction, such as concrete aggregate, asphalt aggregate in road construction, ballast aggregate in railway construction, etc. Due to the application fields, evaluating the durability of these aggregates is required. An economical and durable design cannot be achieved without knowing the resisting capacity of the used stone materials to abrasion, crushing, impact, and disintegration – collectively known as mechanical weathering or degradation. In addition to presenting different forms of mechanical weathering of aggregates, the paper summarizes the most frequently used laboratory tests developed to determine the resistance to these stresses. It introduces various national standards emphasizing their differences and examines the possibility of test result comparability with respect to geology and practical application. The research also presents several empirical relations from the literature between the different degradation parameters. Besides that, the paper aims to give an overview of the international literature that deals with the mechanical weathering of aggregate materials by using organizing tables and comparative graphs; it tries to contribute to the organization and comparability of the existing knowledge and the results found in the literature.