Road construction in arid zones: valuation of local materials

The materials constituting the pavement bodies, until today, have been limited to certain so-called noble materials (rolled sands, aggregates, etc.), but these are in the process of being exhausted under the effect of intensive exploitation and the scarcity of quality quarries. With the objective of preserving the deposits of aggregates in the process of exhaustion for future generations and of exploiting the aeolian sands in abundance in the regions of southern Algeria, we aim to enhance the latter in the body of the roadway mixed with the tuffs, this would imply a reduction in construction costs (use of local aggregates of lower quality available in large quantities, reduction in transport costs). From an environmental point of view, this would limit the impacts with a reduction in CO2 emissions linked to transport. In this work, we applied a new approach based on the technique of mixtures to valorize and exploit the sand of dunes existing in abundance, with the treatment in hydraulic binders, which allowed us to go up to 20% of sand dunes.