Abstract
About 20 billion square feet of Ethylene Propylene Diene Monomer (EPDM) rubber is installed on roofs in the United States and most of them will be reaching the end of their lifespan soon. The purpose of this study is to investigate potential reuses of this rubber in Civil Engineering projects rather than disposing it into landfills. First, laboratory tests were performed on various shredded rubber-sand mixtures to quantify the basic geotechnical engineering properties. The laboratory test results show that the shredded rubber-sand mixture is lightweight with good drainage properties and has shear strength parameters comparable to sand. This indicates that the rubber-sand mixture has potential to be used for retaining wall backfill and many other projects. To assess the economic advantage of using shredded rubber-sand mixtures as a lightweight backfill for retaining walls subjected to static and earthquake loadings, geotechnical designs of a 6 m tall gravity cantilever retaining wall were performed. The computed volume of concrete to build the structural components and volume of backfill material were compared with those of conventional sand backfill. Results show significant reductions in the volume of concrete and backfill material in both static and earthquake loading conditions when the portion of shredded rubber increased in the mixture.
Highlights
The growing human population and consumption of raw materials to meet our needs are depleting our resources, and increasing the amount of waste materials that may be disposed in landfills or thrown into open lands
Another rubber product which is removed in large quantities, but hasn’t received much attention from the geotechnical engineering community is Ethylene Propylene Diene Monomer (EPDM) roofing membrane
[20,21], as the unit weight decreased and the friction angle increased, the lateral active earth in friction angle as more rubber was mixed with sand, as illustrated in Figures 3 and 4 in the laboratory pressures against the wall decreased
Summary
The growing human population and consumption of raw materials to meet our needs are depleting our resources, and increasing the amount of waste materials that may be disposed in landfills or thrown into open lands. Replacing heavy soil with lightweight recycled material such as rubber products having comparable engineering properties can solve a number of geotechnical engineering design and maintenance issues, and help to reduce the consumption of natural resources for a sustainable future Today, most of this rubber waste is derived from the hundreds of millions of scrap tires generated annually. Significant amounts of research have been performed in the last decade to investigate the applicability of waste scrap tires as an alternative to soils in geotechnical engineering [1,2,3,4] Another rubber product which is removed in large quantities, but hasn’t received much attention from the geotechnical engineering community is Ethylene Propylene Diene Monomer (EPDM) roofing membrane. A pilot recycling program launched in 2006 by the EPDM Roofing Association (ERA) has estimated that between 2006
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