Experimental investigation on utilization of waste shredded rubber tire as a replacement to fine aggregate in concrete

Abstract

Depletion of natural resources in the past few decades due to rapid construction activities all around the world has forced a threat to the availability of natural resources for future generation. The utilization of waste industrial by products, in the form of supplementary cementitious materials and waste tire rubber products replacing natural aggregates in production of concrete. In the present study performance of concrete mixes incorporating 2.5, 5, 7.5 and 10% Waste Shredded Rubber Tire (WSRT) as partial replacement of fine aggregate is investigated. Numerous research works have been conducted on replacement of aggregate by waste crumb rubber but data scarce on utilization of waste rubber in concrete directly. Hence to examine characteristics of shredded rubber tire based concretes, two sets of concrete specimen were produced. In the first set, shredded rubber tire is added directly without any pretreatment and in the second set the shredded rubber tire was immersed in NaOH solution for 24 h and then washed with water thoroughly and rubbed with sand paper to obtain the rough surface finish to facilitate improved bonding properties with cement matrix. To evaluate the performance of WSRT based concretes, fresh and hardened properties were determined by conducting slump tests on fresh mixes, and compression, flexural and impact tests on hardened concrete cubes and prisms. Proving results were obtained for potential use of WSRT in concretes for generalized applications.