Fine-Grained Sand Reinforced with Granulated Tire Chips

Abstract

Ideology of Utilizing waste tires as a material to reinforce sand has been developed recently. Waste tire properties such as flexibility, tensile strength and durability are suitable to use them in engineering applications. Alsodifficulties like fire hazard, environmental contamination occurred by waste tires are the other reasons to explore a way to reuse them in a beneficial manner. Soil used in this study is Babolsar (North of Iran) fine-grained sand. This paper aims to investigate effects of granulated tire chips with sizes in the ranges of 4 to 9 mm on the bearing capacity of sand. For this, a series of model footing tests were conducted on the reinforced sand at relative density of 55%. Sand was reinforced with different tire chips contents 5, 6,7,8,10 and15% by weight.Highest bearing capacity ratio (Ratio of bearing capacity reinforced sand to unreinforced sand) was attained 1.56 with tire chips content of 10% that this amount of tire chips named optimum percentage of tire chips. Stress – settlement graphs showed decrease in settlement of footing by using tire chips that lowest settlement was happened in optimum percentage of tire chips.To investigate the optimum reinforced depth for sand containing optimum tire chips, a few tests were done. Result indicated optimum reinforced depth is 1B (B is the footing width).