Assessment of Potential Waste Tires Recycling for Soil Reinforcement

Today, waste tires pose an environmental challenge due to their considerable land utilization and high disposal costs in landfills. However, recycling waste tires could significantly alleviate this issue. This study employed waste tires for soil reinforcement using two different configurations: the waste tire-cell (WT-cell) and the waste tire-grid (WT-grid), which serve as cellular and planar structures, respectively. A series of laboratory plate loading model tests were conducted to analyze the pressure-settlement behavior of a square plate on both reinforced and unreinforced sand, thereby evaluating the effectiveness of this approach. The study investigated the effects of many parameters, such as the depth of the first reinforcement layer, the number of the reinforcement layer, interlayer spacing, and the relative density of the foundation soil. The results indicate that using waste tires in a cellular structure (WT-cell) is more efficacious than the planar (WT-grid) in augmenting bearing capacity and reducing settlement. A single layer of WT-cell reinforcement in loose sand sufficiently enhanced the bearing capacity by 270% and decreased the settlement by 70% compared to unreinforced sand, while the corresponding values for WT-grid reinforcement were 184% and 46%, respectively. This enhancement was achieved by using an optimal initial layer depth of 0.2B and relative density of foundation soil of 40%. The impact of reinforcement is more noticeable when the sand has a lower relative density. On the whole, the results clearly indicate that using waste tires is an effective option for enhancing soil behavior, particularly in light of sustainability considerations.