The other treats intrinsic rock properties from the quarry all together to achieve a global armourstone quality designation, AQD, of the rock, that is independent of the actual conditions of the proposed site of application.
Armourstone production involves aspects of blast design and yield prediction.
Rock armourstone is unusual amongst geomaterials because of the extremely wide range of intrinsic rock strengths that often have to be used and the range of end use conditions in which it must serve.
The armourstone evaluation theme of earlier work by Lienhart, and abrasion testing and degradation modelling of armourstone by Latham are revisited.
It is suggested that appropriate models for armourstone yield prediction will require some form of an in-situ block size distribution assessment.
Unlike blasting in aggregates and mining operations, optimisation of the extraction process has a focus on the potential for production of large blocks for armourstone.
A general in-service degradation model for wear of armourstone, based on a progressive fractional mass loss with time, is redeveloped.
The recently reported 'Swebrec' function and associated prediction model, developed by the Swedish Blasting Research Centre, provides a promising replacement for the Rosin Rammler based models for representing armourstone blast yield curves.
Today steel slags are well characterised and long-term experienced materials mainly used as aggregates for road construction (e.g. asphaltic or unbound layers), as armourstones for hydraulic engineering constructions (e.g. stabilisation of shores), and as fertiliser for agriculture purposes.
Based on these standards and regulations in Germany in 1998 about 97% of the produced steel slags have been used as aggregates for road construction (e.g. as surface layer, road base and sub base for high trafficked roads), ways, earthworks, and armourstones for hydraulic structures.
