Evaluating the effect of using shredded waste tire in the stone columns as an improvement technique

doi:10.1016/j.conbuildmat.2018.05.090

Construction and Building Materials

Volume 176, 10 July 2018, Pages 700-709

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.conbuildmat.2018.05.090 Get rights and content

Highlights

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Utilizing tire wastes in geotechnical applications is a reasonable way to reduce stockpiles of disposed tires.
•
Shredded waste tires can be used as a partial substitution for stone column materials.
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Using long planar shape tire shreds improves the axial bearing capacity of stone column by 30%.
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Results lead to reusing tire waste, improvement in stone columns performance and a decrease in construction costs.

Abstract

In this paper, shredded waste tires are used as a substitution for gravel materials and their effect on stone column’s behavior is investigated. An experimental study is carried out on three sizes of tire shreds, including “Fine tire”, “Medium tire”, and “large tire”. The medium-sized tire shred has the same size as the gravel materials and the other sizes are selected smaller and larger. Thirteen series of large scale direct shear, large oedometer, and constant head permeability tests are carried out in three different volumetric mixture proportions of gravel and tire shreds. The results of the large scale direct shear box and large oedometer tests show an increase in the loading capacity of stone columns for 20% of tire content, however, for tire mixing ratios greater than 20%, the loading capacity of stone column is reduced. Furthermore, 20% of medium-sized tire shreds enhances the loading capacity by 30% and 15%, respectively, with no significant change in permeability. Therefore, it is concluded that the best performance of gravel tire shred admixture is achieved by the medium-sized tire shreds. Eventually, utilizing tire shred as partial replacement for gravel materials is an economic way to enhance the loading capacity of stone columns and also to solve environmental problems.

Introduction

The aim of this study is to use tire shreds and tire crumbs as an alternative material for stone column construction. Tire waste disposal is an environmental issue in the industrialized countries around the globe. The huge amount of stockpiles of tire waste and consequent environmental problems of their disposal, increased the necessity of investigating new applications for these waste materials. Due to the unique properties of tire such as low density, high strength, hydrophobic nature, and high frictional strength, it has gain interest as a valuable engineering resource [1]. Geotechnical engineering has a great potential to reutilize tire wastes and take advantage of their characteristics in order to prevent environmental problems. Tire shreds have been successfully used for road embankment [2], improvement of slope stability [3], drainage layer and etc.

A great deal of research has put forth effort to investigate new applications of tire wastes. According to Rao and Dutta’s [4], the CU triaxial test results of sand and tire shreds mixtures with 20% tire content sustains higher stress values compared to pure sand. Tuncan’s [5] studied tire-sand mixtures and showed that adding tire shreds to asphaltic concrete leads to a reduction in cracks expansion. Foose et al. [6] reported a friction angle of 30° in a 305 mm direct shear test for tire shreds with the size of 50–150 mm. Vinot et al. [7] reported a 3°–6° increase in the friction angle value and the optimum tire content was estimated to be%30. Utilizing tire wastes for soil improvement is another application of these waste material in geotechnical engineering. Among soil improvement techniques, stone column is one of the most well-known and cost effective techniques. Stone column improves the strength and deformation capacities of the soft soil by acting as a reinforcement and a drainage element [8]. This technique is suitable for flexible structures such as road embankments and storage tanks and is mostly installed on loose sand or soft marine clay [9]. Many researches studied the load transfer mechanism of stone columns [10], [11], [12], [13]. Some researches have investigated stone columns as liquefaction countermeasures through field experiments [14], [15], [16], [17] and numerical studies [8], [18]. Hughes and Withers [11] estimated the ultimate loading capacity considering bulging failure for a single column and using elastic-plastic theory. Many studies investigated methods to enhance stone column stiffness through encasing [19], [20], [21], [22], [23] or inserting nails or steel bars [24], [25]. Ayothiraman et al. [26] investigated tire shreds as an alternative material for stone columns. They replaced 20%, 40%, and 60% of gravel with tire chips. It was observed that replacing 20% of gravels in stone column with tire chips leads to the highest axial bearing capacity.

In this study, a series of large scale direct shear box tests are carried out to investigate the effects of adding tire shreds on mechanical properties and deformation of stone columns. For this purpose, three sizes of tire shreds including “Fine tire”, “Medium tire”, and “large tire” are considered to investigate the influence of tire size. Furthermore, tire contents of 20%, 40%, and 60% are selected to study the effects of different mixing ratios. Specimens are placed in a large Oedometer with the stone column in the center and the soft soil surrounding the stone column. Finally, by using the constant head test method, the permeability of each tire-gravel mixture is calculated.

Section snippets

Shredded tire and stone column gravel materials

The shredded tire used in this study is provided by Azar-Sum Company. Three sizes of tire shreds are selected, including granular “Fine”, planar “Medium”, and cubic “large”. Tire shreds are graded using standard sieves and their corresponding categories are shown in Fig. 1. Edincliler et al. [27] classified tire waste products with respect to their size and processing technique into four categories: tire chips, tire shreds, tire buffings, and tire crumb. According to Edincliler et al. [27],

Shear strength

Fig. 6 shows the results of direct shear test with 50 kPa normal loading conducted on medium-sized tire and gravel mixtures. The results of shear test with other normal loadings are the same, but not demonstrated due to space constraints.

The results show that mixtures with more tire content demonstrate more ductile behavior. For specimens with tire content of 20%, a slight increase in the maximum shear force and the corresponding shear displacement is observed. In mixtures with 40% and 60% tire

Summary and conclusions

In this paper, the effects of using waste tire in stone columns, as a partial replacement of gravel are investigated. For this purpose, three sizes of tire shreds including fine, medium, and large, are selected and added to the mixture in three volumetric percentages of 20%, 40%, and 60%. Large direct shear tests and loading tank tests are carried out to study the effect of tire inclusion on mechanical properties of stone column and its permeability. An optimum percentage and effective size for

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.

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