Application of Tire Derived Aggregate as Highway Embankment Fill Material

• Author / Creator

  Meles, Daniel. T.

• Discarded tires have been an environmental concern in different parts of the world. One mass application to avoid such environmental concern is to use them as embankment fill material in civil engineering projects. In such applications, discarded tires are usually used in a shred form referred as Tire Derived Aggregate (TDA). Tire derived aggregate has desirable properties for most civil engineering applications; it is lightweight, free-draining, and has good thermal resistivity. In the past, it has been successfully used as fill material in various engineering projects. Tire derived aggregate has also been used as fill material by mixing with soil. Despite the superior geotechnical characteristics and successful application, predicting settlement in the field based on laboratory tests has been a problem. Moreover, only TDA produced from Passenger and Light Truck Tire referred as PLTT has been used in the past. However, in regions with heavy industrial and mining activities, such as the Province of Alberta, Canada, Off-The-Road (OTR) tires have become a significant source for TDA production. The major challenge for the use of TDA from OTR is the lack of laboratory data or field experience.
  In this study, the application and engineering properties of TDA produced from PLTT and OTR, and PLTT-mixed with soil as fill material for highway embankment application has been investigated using large-scale laboratory or full-scale field experiments. The compression behavior of TDA, taking particle size and source of tire as experimental variable, has been investigated using large-scale laboratory testing apparatus. Based on results from the large-scale laboratory compression test, nonlinear elastic material model has been developed for TDA. The developed material model has been used in numerical analysis to predict settlement measured in the field for the construction of a test embankment. The result from numerical analysis agrees reasonable well with the measured settlement in the field.
  Various data were also collected from the field experiment where TDA or TDA-mixed with soil was used as fill material. The ease of construction for using TDA or TDA-mixed with soil as fill material, field mixing of TDA and soil, immediate and time-dependent settlement, potential for internal heating and overall performance have been evaluated from the data collected. Analyses of the field data support the use of PLTT, OTR, and TDA-mixed with soil as a fill material for highway embankment. The construction can be completed with conventional construction equipment and the performance is quite satisfactory. Moreover, such construction is beneficial to the environment by recycling a waste material.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • PLTT
  • Embankment
  • Tire Derived Aggregat
  • OTR
  • Compression

• Graduation date

  Fall 2014

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Doctor of Philosophy

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R3901ZQ3G

• License

  This thesis is made available by the University of Alberta Libraries with permission of the copyright owner solely for non-commercial purposes. This thesis, or any portion thereof, may not otherwise be copied or reproduced without the written consent of the copyright owner, except to the extent permitted by Canadian copyright law.