Okanagan 4 Ukraine Foundation founding member Iryna Storozhuk, left, sits beside student Alexa Hum. In the back row, UBCO Professor Gord Lovegrove stands beside team members Hans Nicolajsen Suarez, Jacques Aritanto, Arman Hajiabdolmajid, Alexander Marcuzzi and Yugandher Ghugare. On the table are some of the samples of the sustainable concrete mix after different stages of testing.
A team of UBC Okanagan students has shown that recycling rubble from destroyed buildings can help Ukraine rebuild its roads when the war eventually ends.
As part of their year-end capstone project, six School of Engineering students worked on an initiative called “Rebuilding Ukraine.” They partnered with Dr. Kate Woodman and Iryna Storozhuk, the founding members of Okanagan 4 Ukraine, and four Ukrainian engineers to test the idea of using rubble from destroyed buildings to rebuild roads.
Dr. Woodman reached out to numerous Canadian universities and organizations— including the Canada-Ukraine Chamber of Commerce, the Canadian Embassy in Ukraine, the Canadian Ukrainian Foundation and Engineers without Borders—to find groups willing to help the country.
“Of the more than 25 engineering faculties I wrote to, many said this was a new idea—finding ways to support a country during an active war,” says Dr. Woodman. “I’m glad the UBCO team took it on. This project shows how Canadian universities can contribute to humanitarian engineering and post-conflict resilience while giving students valuable international experience.”
The six students—Alexa Hum, Alexander Marcuzzi, Arman Hajiabdolmajid, Hans Nicolajsen Suarez, Jacques Aritanto and Yugandher Ghugare—worked with faculty advisors Drs. Dimitry Sediako, Jonathan Holzman, Suliman Gargoum and Gordon Lovegrove. They explored using the ruins of buildings to create the right type of concrete strong enough to rebuild the road network.
Arman Hajiabdolmajid, who is finishing his studies at UBCO this year, explains that the team designed a strong, reliable concrete mix that can be used as a solid and reliable road surface to rebuild the country’s existing but heavily damaged transportation infrastructure.
“Due to the ongoing war there are large amounts of waste material in the form of rubble and debris and, if not put to use, will end up in landfills and eventually overwhelm the country’s waste system,” says Hajiabdolmajid. “By recycling the concrete rubble as a replacement for aggregate, a major component in concrete, we can put this rubble to good use rather than discarding it.”
He adds that recycling rubble also helps reduce the need to extract the traditional fine and coarse aggregate from riverbeds and quarries as the recycled concrete proves to be a suitable substitution.
“As rebuilding begins, demand for materials will increase, potentially depleting local reserves. This could lead to costly imports as substitutes,” he adds. “And the country’s waste system is not designed to process the amount of waste material produced from this war.”
A typical concrete mix consists of cement, fine aggregate or sand, gravel or coarse aggregate, water and additives that enhance the final product. To reuse rubble from Ukraine, the debris must be crushed into fine sand. This involves gathering and transporting the damaged concrete to a processing site where materials like metal, plastic, glass and wood are removed and disposed of properly.
In the UBCO lab, the students gathered concrete waste from past experiments to create a solution that included the highest volume of recycled fine aggregate while still meeting strength requirements. They used compression testing to monitor the concrete’s strength after seven, 14 and 28 days.
Although concrete roads are not common in Ukraine, the team chose concrete over asphalt because it has a longer lifespan. Reusing rubble also supports some United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and makes the mix more environmentally friendly. The students created a sustainable, high-performance concrete using 30 per cent recycled aggregate. It passed lab testing at UBCO and exceeded benchmarks required for European road infrastructure. To complete the project, they also created a prototype sensor to detect internal concrete cracks or instability.
Dr. Jonathan Holzman, an electrical engineering professor, says this innovative approach helps solve resource scarcity and sustainability problems.
“Our capstone projects give students hands-on, real-world experiences before they even graduate. Working with the Okanagan 4 Ukraine team and engineers in Ukraine gave these students the opportunity to make a difference in a country that will, hopefully, one day soon, begin the path to reconstruction.”
UBC Okanagan connects businesses and community organizations with student teams through capstone projects and other student-experience programs. Opportunities are open to partner with students to solve real-world challenges and benefit from their expertise. To learn more visit: ee.ok.ubc.ca/programs-and-opportunities/capstone-projects.
