46 Tyre Asia April/May 2018
GREEN
Building, repairing and maintaining
road infrastructure pose unusual
challenges to engineers who work under
constant pressure to economise but are
also compelled to ensure road safety,
which is their top priority. Although
conventional concrete roads are
considered more durable than asphalt,
engineers grapple with the issue of
using recycled materials, particularly
waste tyres, to press down the cost.
Research by Dr Renga Rao Krishnamoorthy of the Centre
for Studies in Structure and Material Engineering at Selangor
(Malaysia)-based Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM), has shown
that it is possible to upgrade standard concrete materials with
recycled concrete and shredded rubber from end-of-life tyres.
Explaining his research work, he said in an interview that the
optimum percentage of recycled concrete material that can
be used to get good value of indirect tensile strength is in the
range of 10% to 30% of shredded tyre rubber and ground plastic
polypropylene bottlesWaste rubber for
road repair
R
esearch by Dr Renga
Rao Krishnamoorthy of
the Centre for Studies in
Structure and Material
Engineering at Selangor (Malaysia)-
based Universiti Teknologi Mara
(UiTM), has found that recycled
rubber from waste tyre and
polypropylene from used plastic
bottle can be utilised as alternative
materials for replacing either sand
or coarse aggregate in concrete mix
for building pavements.
The optimum percentage that he
found, which is 10% of sand and
coarse aggregate, could be replacedwith recycled materials, including
waste tyre rubber. This will also
address the problems being faced
in environment-friendly disposal of
waste tyres.Shredded tyre rubber can be used as
a replacement for coarse aggregate
by using an optimum percentage of
20% for repair of pavements. “The
extend of my research to optimize
the use of waste tyre for road
pavement is an alternative method,
which is to re-use the waste tyre
material in the form of shredded
tyre in a controlled mixture of
concrete,” he told Tyre Asia.There are many types of asphalt or
flexible pavement failures, namely,
‘alligator cracking’, shear failure
cracking, longitudinal cracking,
formation of waves and corrugation
and many more. Nevertheless, these
road damage could be re-engineered
and repaired using recycled
concrete materials and shredded
tyre material in certain proportions.When asked what kind of
granulated or chip of shredded
waste tyre rubber is found useful
in recycled concrete material, Dr
Krishnamoorthy said his research
has revealed that 6 mm coarseDr Renga Rao KrishnamoorthyTA News Bureau