Influence of size of granulated rubber on bearing capacity of fine-grained sand

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Nowadays, in most of the advanced and developing countries, waste tires have caused serious environmental problems such as fire and environmental contamination. For reusing them in an appropriate and beneficial way, waste tires have been utilized as a lightweight fill material in geotechnical engineering applications such as highway embankments. In this study, Babolsar fine-grained sand and granulated rubber with sizes in the ranges of 1 to 4, 1 to 9, and 4 to 9 mm were used. A series of model footing tests on reinforced sand with different sizes of granulated rubber were carried out. According to the results, 4- to 9-mm granulated rubber had the highest effect on enhancement of bearing capacity and reduction of fine-grained sand settlement. The results showed that sand-granulated rubber mixtures with granulated rubber in the range of 4 to 9 mm and content of 10% by weight of mixture can increase the bearing capacity of sand up to 50%. In addition, for this mixture, a series of laboratory tests were conducted to determine the optimum width and depth of the reinforcement layer consisting of sand-granulated rubber mixture. The results indicate that the optimum width and the most effective depth of this mixture are 5B and 1B, respectively (where B is the footing width).