Compacted expansive elastic silt and tyre powder waste

Abstract

Building on/with expansive soils with no treatment brings complications. Compacted expansive soils specifically fall short in satisfying the minimum requirements for transport embankment infrastructures, requiring the adoption of hauled virgin mineral aggregates or a sustainable alternative. Use of hauled aggregates comes at a high carbon and economical cost. On average, every 9m high embankment built with quarried/hauled soils cost 12600 MJ.m-2 Embodied Energy (EE). A prospect of using mixed cutting-arising expansive soils with industrial/domestic wastes can reduce the carbon cost and ease the pressure on landfills. The widespread use of recycled materials has been extensively limited due to concerns over their long-term performance, generally low shear strength and stiffness. In this contribution, hydromechanical properties of a waste tyre sand-sized rubber (a mixture of polybutadiene, polyisoprene, elastomers, and styrene-butadiene) and expansive silt is studied, allowing the short- and long-term behaviour of optimum compacted composites to be better established. The inclusion of tyre shred substantially decreased the swelling potential/pressure and modestly lowered the compression index. Silt-Tyre powder replacement lowered the bulk density, allowing construction of lighter reinforced earth structures. The shear strength and stiffness decreased on addition of tyre powder, yet the contribution of matric suction to the shear strength remained constant for tyre shred contents up to 20%. Reinforced soils adopted a ductile post-peak plastic behaviour with enhanced failure strain, offering the opportunity to build more flexible subgrades as recommended for expansive soils. Residual water content and tyre shred content are directly correlated; tyre-reinforced silt showed a greater capacity of water storage (than natural silts) and hence a sustainable solution to waterlogging and surficial flooding particularly in urban settings. Crushed fine tyre shred mixed with expansive silts/sands at 15 to 20 wt% appear to offer the maximum reduction in swelling-shrinking properties at minimum cracking, strength loss and enhanced compressibility expenses.