ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Mater.
Sec. Structural Materials
This article is part of the Research TopicAdvancing Eco-Friendly Construction: The Role of Biomass and Waste IntegrationView all 18 articles
Performance evaluation of ternary solid waste-based geopolymer subgrade materials
Provisionally accepted
- Changchun Institute of Technology, Changchun, China
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This study employed three industrial by-products-cement kiln dust (CKD), fly ash (FA), and phosphogypsum (PG)—as precursors to develop one-part geopolymer stabilized subgrade materials. The principal objective was to quantify how binder proportioning influences the mechanical and durability performance of the resulting mixtures. The findings support the large-scale recycling of solid wastes and the development of alternative low-carbon cementitious materials for pavement engineering. Unconfined compressive strength (UCS), water stability, freeze-thaw (F-T) cycle, and ultrasonic pulse velocity (UPV) tests were conducted on ten mixtures. The total CKD-PG dosage ranged from 42% to 90%. The results indicate that increasing the total CKD-PG dosage resulted in a denser internal structure, which in turn improved both mechanical performance and durability. When the total CKD-PG dosage exceeded 70%, the geopolymer exhibited substantially higher UCS, enhanced water stability, and a compressive strength loss of only 2.6% after 15 F-T cycles. These results were markedly better than those for mixtures with a total CKD-PG dosage below 70%. UPV measurements corroborated that this proportion yielded the greatest internal compactness. The optimal formulation was 46% CKD, 44% PG, and 10% FA (C46P44). This mix delivered the best combination of strength, frost resistance, and density and satisfied requirements for highway subgrade applications. The study provides experimental evidence for large-scale reuse of CKD, FA, and PG and identifies a key mix proportion for geopolymer use in highway subgrade construction.
Keywords: Freeze-thaw cycle, geopolymer, Solid Waste, Ultrasonic pulse velocity, Unconfined compressive strength, Water stability
Received: 23 Dec 2025; Accepted: 02 Feb 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Li, Cui, Guo, Chen and Zhou. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Yuhang Cui
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