Ability of vibration control using rubberized concrete for tunnel invert-filling

Abstract

Crumb Rubber Concrete (CRC) tunnel invert-filling is made of the rubberized concrete using waste rubber as aggregate. In this paper, the dynamic characteristics of the CRC tunnel invert-filling was studied. Firstly, the mesoscale specimen models of rubberized concrete were constructed to obtain the elastic modulus, Poisson's ratio, and damping ratio of the rubberized concrete at the macro scale. Secondly, a macroscale model of CRC tunnel invert-filling, which was verified by the experiment, was established. Based on this, the dynamic characteristics of the CRC tunnel invert-filling with different rubber content (0%, 5%, 10%) were analyzed. The results show that the CRC tunnel invert-filling can effectively attenuate the vibration acceleration transmitted to the tunnel. Furthermore, compared with 0% rubber content, (1) the effective values of vibration acceleration with rubber content 5% and 10% are reduced by 4.2% and 9.2%, respectively. (2) the tunnel invert-filling of rubberized concrete has better vibration damping performance in the central frequency range of 1 ∼ 10 Hz and 20 ∼ 63 Hz, and the maximum insertion loss is 2.1 dB. In general, 10% rubber content is the best compared with 0% and 5%.