Recycled Rubber as an Aggregate Replacement in Self-Compacting Concrete—Literature Overview

Abstract

In the past few decades, due to the exponential increase of the world’s population, the number of discarded waste tires has become a serious ecological and environmental problem. Decomposition of waste tire rubber can take longer than 50 years, and every year the number of discarded tires is rapidly growing. With the inclusion of waste tire rubber into self-compacting concrete this global problem can be reduced. Waste tire rubber can be incorporated in self-compacting concrete by partially replacing the natural fine and coarse aggregate, reducing consumption of sand and gravel and preserving these natural materials. In addition, recycling and reusing waste tire rubber avoids the need for tire landfilling, as one of the major ecological problem of the near future. Replacement of natural aggregate with waste tire rubber can have an undesirable influence on the mechanical properties of self-compacting concrete, i.e., compressive strength, flexural strength, splitting tensile strength, and modulus of elasticity, however. On the other hand, replacing natural gravel or sand with waste tire rubber can improve impact resistance, ductility, and fatigue resistance. This paper presents an overview of the literature investigating recycled waste tire rubber used as a fine and/or coarse aggregate replacement in self-compacting concrete and its influence on several essential fresh and hardened self-compacting concrete properties.

Cyclic stress–strain rate-dependent response of rubberised concrete

“…The performance of concrete materials provided with recycled tyre rubber particles as a replacement for conventional mineral aggregates has been studied extensively in recent years [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13]. The proportion replaced influences the fresh, mechanical, physical and long-term properties of rubberised concrete materials (RuC) [1][2][3][4][5][6]. Compressive and tensile strengths, as well as the elastic and dynamic modulus, decrease with rubber content, whilst the energy dissipation is typically enhanced compared to conventional concrete materials (CCM) [5][6][7][8][9][10].…”

“…The proportion replaced influences the fresh, mechanical, physical and long-term properties of rubberised concrete materials (RuC) [1][2][3][4][5][6]. Compressive and tensile strengths, as well as the elastic and dynamic modulus, decrease with rubber content, whilst the energy dissipation is typically enhanced compared to conventional concrete materials (CCM) [5][6][7][8][9][10]. Some increase in strength can also often be obtained by rubber particle surface treatment [11].…”

Self-Compacting Concrete with Recycled Concrete Aggregate: Resistance against Aggressive External Agents

“…Aggregate substitution in several materials, including concrete, by different types of waste, such as rubber, slag, and even Recycled Concrete Aggregate (RCA), is an area of study that has opened several research lines (Busic et al, 2018;Safiuddin et al, 2013;Verian et al, 2018). Hence, the use of RCA in this study is evaluated for the manufacture of concrete.…”

Modelling the Influence of Waste Rubber on Compressive Strength of Concrete by Artificial Neural Networks

“…The long lifetime of waste tire rubber was one of the factors which aroused the interest of the research community in the replacement of natural river aggregate with rubber products in concrete mixtures. This was with the goal of producing environmentally-friendly concrete [ 7 ]. The ductility of concrete can be improved by substituting natural aggregates with various forms of recycled tire rubber—powder, crumb or chipped rubber particles—thereby taking into consideration sustainability and environmental pollution [ 8 ].…”