Award-winning papers in 2022 Free

The Mokshagundam Visvesvaraya Prize, presented to the best papers written by overseas authors or covering an overseas project, was awarded to Zhou et al. (2022).

Recycling waste materials for transport infrastructure such as coal wash (CW), steel furnace slag (SFS), fly ash (FA) and recycled tyre products is an efficient way of minimising the stockpiles of waste materials while offering significant economic and environmental benefits, as well as improving the stability and longevity of infrastructure foundations. This paper presents some of the most recent state-of-the-art studies undertaken at the University of Wollongong, Australia on the use of waste materials such as (a) CW-based granular mixtures (i.e. SFS + CW, CW + FA) for port reclamation and road base/subbase and (b) using recycled tyre products (i.e. rubber crumbs, tyre cell, under-sleeper pads and under-ballast mats) to increase track stability and reduce ballast degradation. Typical methods of applying these waste materials for different infrastructure conditions are described and the results of comprehensive laboratory and field tests are presented and discussed.

The Telford Premium Prize, presented for the best paper published in Ground Improvement, was awarded to Gargano et al. (2022).

Electrokinetic (EK) treatment is becoming increasingly important in the geotechnical field, especially for treating fine-grained soils. Above all, dredged sediments (slurries) need to be treated in order to be reutilised. Applying an electric potential difference within the soil, three phenomena take place: electrophoresis, electro-osmosis and electromigration. Negative particles move towards the positive electrode while water and cations move towards the negative electrode. Although the literature is full of cases describing the parameters that affect the EK process, there is a need to understand its limits and fields of application. This paper summarises the results collected from several case studies to understand the influence of some parameters on the efficiency of EK treatment, specifically in terms of dewatering rate. Soil conditions (soil type, pH, pore fluid salinity and water content) and set-up design parameters (electrode materials, configurations and operational mode) are analysed. Finally, parameter ranges for assessing the acceptability of electro-osmotic treatment are proposed. The results show that there are optimum values for the previously mentioned parameters that improve the dewatering and thus enhance the behaviour of the treated soils. EK treatment can be effective when applied on dredged sediments with low salinity.