Use of Reclaimed Rubber Cell in Highway Pavement: An Experimental Research

With the rapidly growing number of vehicles around the world, the disposal of the waste and discarded tyres is a serious concern worldwide. There are few investigations reported in the literature w.r.t. the use of the regenerated rubber derived from the waste tyres in the construction of pavements. The highway construction forms a potential sector for the use of such waste whereby the problem of its disposal will get eliminated on one hand and reduce the environmental concern on the other hand. The use of such waste is found to improve the performance and strength of the pavement. This paper presents the limited experimental investigations on the use of innovative reinforcement in the form of rubber cell derived from the regenerated or reclaimed tyres in the pavement application. The rubber cell derived is similar to conventional geocell. The experimental study entails the use of the rubber cell placed within the conventional granular sub-base (GSB) of the conventional flexible pavement through a model pavement. The laboratory model tests were conducted with the help of the test tank of dimensions (1 m × 1m × 1m). The sub-base was placed above the weak subgrade in a test tank. The results of the laboratory model tests indicates the better performance of the pavement with the use of the rubber cell in the sub-base as compared to the performance of the pavement with conventional granular subbase without rubber cell reinforcement. The study confirms the effective utilization of the discarded tyres as a reinforcing material in the pavements.