A study into the use of crumb rubber in railway ballast

Ballasted track is the most common form of construction used in railway transportation due to a number of benefits in comparison with other solutions such as slab track. However, the degradation of the ballast particles and the layer settlement lead to important maintenance costs. Thus, diverse research has been carried out to develop new materials with the aim of increasing the service life of the track. To this end, the present paper focuses on the use of crumb rubber (from end-of-life tires) as elastic aggregates mixed with ballast particles, which could reduce ballast degradation and consumption of natural aggregates. At the same time, an abundant waste source is reused and the use of raw binders (proposed technique employed to bond elastic particles to ballast particles) is not necessary, which potentially reduces costs and consumption of raw materials. For this reason, the influence of different percentages of crumb rubber was studied in the laboratory using a ballast box. In addition, once the optimal quantity of rubber had been determined, its effect on ballast behaviour under high stress level was analysed. Results show that the use of 10% of crumb rubber (by volume) could reduce ballast degradation and at the same time as the capacity of the ballast layer to dissipate energy is increased and its stiffness is reduced. Additionally, based on the present laboratory study, the track settlement could be reduced with 10% rubber particles used as elastic aggregates.