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  4. Suitability of Excavated London Clay from Tunnelling Operations as a Supplementary Cementitious Material and Expanded Clay Aggregate
 
conference paper

Suitability of Excavated London Clay from Tunnelling Operations as a Supplementary Cementitious Material and Expanded Clay Aggregate

Kanavaris, Fragkoulis
•
Papakosta, Athina
•
Zunino, Franco  
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2025
Calcined Clays for Sustainable Concrete
International Conference on Calcined Clays for Sustainable Concrete 2022

London Clay is a marine geological formation that is relatively abundant in the London Basin area in the United Kingdom. It primarily originates from reworked Jurassic shale, greensand and chalk and lateritic Eocene soils with a mineralogy consisting of kaolinite, illite, chlorite and smectites. As part of a major tunnelling project in the United Kingdom, significant volumes of London Clay will be excavated in the wider London area. The excavated material would normally be treated as waste, sent to landfill or incorporated into landscaping. Instead, a method is developed to turn the excavated London Clay spoil into a construction resource such as supplementary cementitious material (SCM) and/or lightweight aggregate. This paper reports the developments within the Re-Purposed Excavated Arisings Loop (REAL) research project aiming to transform London Clay spoil into such construction resources. It encompasses investigations on the plastic, microstructural and chemical properties of raw and calcined London Clays, as well as hardened concrete and mortar properties produced with those clays. The material characterisation results demonstrated that London Clay, in its calcined form, can be a suitable SCM for low/medium strength concrete. The REAL project aims at developing robust concrete mixes with compressive strengths of up to 40 MPa, and Portland cement replacement levels of up to 70%. Additionally, the possibility of producing expanded clay lightweight aggregate from excavated London Clay is also explored. Preliminary lab test results indicate material suitability for certain construction applications—an important step towards a circular economy approach for large construction projects.

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Type
conference paper
DOI
10.1007/978-3-031-83889-7_38
Scopus ID

2-s2.0-105009233451

Author(s)
Kanavaris, Fragkoulis

Arup Group Limited

Papakosta, Athina

SCS Railways

Zunino, Franco  

École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

Pantelidou, Heleni

Arup Group Limited

Baudet, Beatrice A.

University College London

Marsh, Alastair T.M.

University of Bath

Rahmon, Suraj

University of Bath

Dhandapani, Yuvaraj

University of Bath

Bernal, Susan A.

University of Bath

Szanser, Jan

Leca Polska

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Date Issued

2025

Published in
Calcined Clays for Sustainable Concrete
DOI of the book
10.1007/978-3-031-83889-7
Subjects

Calcined clay

•

Expanded clay aggregate

•

London clay formation

•

SCM

Editorial or Peer reviewed

REVIEWED

Written at

EPFL

EPFL units
EDMX-ENS  
LMC  
Event nameEvent acronymEvent placeEvent date
International Conference on Calcined Clays for Sustainable Concrete 2022

ICCCSC 2022.

Lausanne, Switzerland

2022-07-05 - 2022-07-07

FunderFunding(s)Grant NumberGrant URL

ARUP

Available on Infoscience
August 20, 2025
Use this identifier to reference this record
https://infoscience.epfl.ch/handle/20.500.14299/253276
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