Damping dissipation properties of rubberized concrete and its application in anti-collision of bridge piers

Abstract

Rubberized concrete contains crumb rubber as an additional aggregate, serving as a possible solution to deal with waste tires. To investigate the potential of using rubberized concrete as anti-collision cladding of bridge piers, a set of static and dynamic tests and finite element modelling were carried out. First of all, normal concrete and rubberized concrete with different crumb rubber particle sizes and volume fractions were fabricated and tested to obtain its mechanical properties, including compressive strength, elastic modulus and loss factor. Then these mechanical properties were used in three truck-pier collision models established by LS-DYNA. The difference among the three models is the cladding of the pier. One was a single concrete pier without cladding (SP) and the other two were with normal concrete cladding (NC) and rubberized concrete cladding (RC). It is found that with the increase of rubber particle size and content, the compressive strength and elastic modulus decrease but the loss factor increases. Rubberized concrete cladding is suitable for protecting the bridge pier since its high energy dissipation capacity.