Dynamic shear modulus and damping ratio of rubber-sand mixtures with a wide range of rubber content

The binary mixture of rubber and clean sand has been used as a synthetic porous material characterized by such advantages as light density, strong compressibility and good durability compared to the natural sandy soil. Previous research researches mainly focused on the static properties of this binary mixture. In this paper, the dynamic properties of the binary mixture including dynamic shear modulus and damping ratio, were investigated through a series of resonant column tests. The results indicated that the addition of rubber particles into clean sand significantly improves the dynamic performance of the host sandy soil. A unified model was proposed to describe the dynamic shear modulus and damping ratio of the rubber-sand mixtures with a wide range of rubber content. The synthetic mixture showed a great potential in the applications of the seismic isolation and reduction technique.