Research on Hot Spots and Future Trends of Steel Slag Application in Road Construction by Bibliometric Analysis

The large amount of steel slag has become a constraint on the steel industry's ultra-low emission problems. The application of steel slag in road construction could not only improve the performance of road surface and traffic safety but also reduce the cost of road surface and improve the ecological environment, thus killing two birds with one stone. This study analyzed the research trend of steel slag applied in road construction quantitatively by bibliometrics, and the data were obtained from the core database of the Web of Science from 1900 to November 26, 2023. The results showed that the earliest research on the application of steel slag to road construction started in 1986, the number of publications surged after the large number of steel slag applied to road construction in China in 2011, and China accounted for nearly 50% of the publications. The top three funding sources were China's National Science Foundation (NSF), the Central Universities’ Basic Research Funds (CUBSF), and China's National Key Research and Development Program (NKRDP). The top three research areas for steel slag application in road construction were metallurgy, materials science, and environmental science. In addition, this study also explored the status and future development trend of steel slag applied to road construction.