Fatigue performance of waste rubber concrete for rigid road pavements

The handling and storage of end-of-life tyres is an environmental problem and constitutes a considerable worldwide challenge. This paper investigates the suitability of using discarded waste tyre rubber particles in concrete rigid road pavements. The objective is to optimize size and proportion of rubber particle to improve the material performance. A tests program was carried out to know the effect of rubber size and rubber content on mechanical properties of concrete pavements. Mixtures with rubber particles of variable sizes (1-4, 10 and 16 mm) added in different proportions (10, 20 and 30%) are considered. A novel test to evaluate deformation (in terms of transversal micro-cracks) suffered by the material under cyclical efforts similar to traffic loads is proposed. The results show that there exists an optimal combination of size and proportion of rubber particles that improves the performance of the material under cyclic load stresses, which makes the material suitable for the construction of rigid concrete pavements.