Experimental Investigations on the Pull-Out Behavior of Tire Strips Reinforced Sands.

Li-Hua Li,Yong Liu,Heng-Lin Xiao,Yan-Jun Chen,Pedro Ferreira

doi:10.3390/ma10070707

Abstract

Waste tires have excellent mechanical performance and have been used as reinforcing material in geotechnical engineering; however, their interface properties are poorly understood. To further our knowledge, this paper examines the pull-out characteristics of waste tire strips in a compacted sand, together with uniaxial and biaxial geogrids also tested under the same conditions. The analysis of the results shows that the interlocking effect and pull-out resistance between the tire strip and the sand is very strong and significantly higher than that of the geogrids. In the early stages of the pull-out test, the resistance is mainly provided by the front portion of the embedded tire strips, as the pull-out test continues, more and more of the areas towards the end of the tire strips are mobilized, showing a progressive failure mechanism. The deformations are proportional to the frictional resistance between the tire-sand interface, and increase as the normal stresses increase. Tire strips of different wear intensities were tested and presented different pull-out resistances; however, the pull-out resistance mobilization patterns were generally similar. The pull-out resistance values obtained show that rubber reinforcement can provide much higher pull-out forces than the geogrid reinforcements tested here, showing that waste tires are an excellent alternative as a reinforcing system, regardless of the environmental advantages.

Highlights

IntroductionStatistical data [1] has shown that the European Community generated an estimated 4.5 million tons of new tires in 2010, while 289 million tires were replaced that year; other countries have displayed similar data (according to [2,3,4,5,6])
The number of waste tires has rapidly increased in the recent decade
The results show that the values obtained for the tire strips plot above the values obtained for the geogrid, showing that the contact interface between the tire strips is capable of mobilizing much larger shear stresses than that of the geogrids

Summary

Introduction

Statistical data [1] has shown that the European Community generated an estimated 4.5 million tons of new tires in 2010, while 289 million tires were replaced that year; other countries have displayed similar data (according to [2,3,4,5,6]). Waste tire disposal has become a serious environmental problem in many countries. Tests performed on a solid tire, produced in the 1920s and aged naturally in the woods for more than 80 years, have shown that whilst a crust had formed on the surface, the material located a few millimeters from the surface maintained the same properties as the natural rubber [7].

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion