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Construction materials and sustainable development
Published in Natalia Yakovleva, Edmund Nickless, Routledge Handbook of the Extractive Industries and Sustainable Development, 2022
Patrick Junior, Daniel M. Franks
Cobblestones are environmentally friendly compared to asphalt – a hydrocarbon product. Preparing asphalt requires a significant amount of fuel to bring to the recommended laying temperature. In contrast, cobblestones are prepared and laid cold.
Interlocking paving stones made of limestone sand and volcanic ash aggregates
Published in Road Materials and Pavement Design, 2021
Pavements are distinguished primarily based on their surface materials, which can be made from concrete, asphalt, clay brick, or concrete pavers (Monrose et al. 2020). Paving stones are widely used in urban roads, sidewalks and shopping centres (Tunc 2007), and they are fabricated by mixing cement, aggregate and water in certain ratios (Semiz 2006). The history of parquet road applications may be traced back as far as the Roman Empire (MEGEP 2012; Kaya and Karakurt 2016). Currently, interlocking concrete paving stones are popular in Europe and the USA (Tekmen 2006; Gunatilake and Mampearachchi 2019). Concrete paving stones are produced in different grades, such as square cobblestones, tombstones and interlocking paving stones (this third category being the most common) (Durmus and Simsek 2008; MEGEP 2012). Traditionally, old cobblestones were set in sand, with their narrower ends firmly set at the base and their wider tops nearly touching, with just a little sand between them. No mortar was used. Many people still install them in this traditional way. European cobblestones have withstood centuries of hoof beats and carriage wheels, and they are still going strong. The stones, set in place 100–400 years ago, once formed transportation networks, but have since been paved over with asphalt. Cobblestones were used not only in Europe, but in the early USA, where they were originally brought over on ships as ballast, and later were sourced locally. Because most roads in the USA were built using macadam, tarmac, or asphalt, it is easier to find the stones in Europe. Like cobblestones, Santa Barbara sandstone is not quarried, but excavated – in this case from building sites – where boulders that tumbled from the surrounding Santa Ynez mountains centuries ago lie nestled in the soil. Sampietrini is the typical kind of pavement found in several cities in Italy. It is made of beveled stones of black basalt (sampietrini) placed one next to the other. The earliest examples were made by trimming large blocks that had been used in ancient Roman roads, recently discovered in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century archaeological excavations. The first documented use in Rome of sampietrini stones was during the reign of Pope Pius V (1566–72). Over the next two centuries, the stones were used to pave all the main streets of Rome, because this method was superior to brick and provided a smoother and stronger surface for carriages, among other reasons. Because of its peculiarities, the sampietrini are not suitable for streets where traffic travels at high speed. Nowadays its use is largely confined to historical or very narrow streets in the centre of Rome, where the traffic is light and slow (Rinne 2010; Cibin 2015).