Cemented Sand–Rubber Mixtures Under Cyclic Triaxial Loading

Abstract

The increasing number of scrap waste tyres can be eliminated by recycling and reusing them in civil and geotechnical engineering projects. They are commonly shredded into smaller sizes and mixed with soils. Subsequently, the mixture is used for variety of purposes in geotechnical engineering projects, creating an alternative construction material. This paper presents a series of experimental tests conducted on cemented sand–rubber mixtures in undrained cyclic triaxial testing. Samples with rubber fractions of 0% (pure sand), 10, 20, 30, and 50% are used with 3% cementation. The use of cementation when granular sand and rubber are mixed is expected to improve the stiffness and mitigate against excessive deformations. The results indicate that the addition and the increase of the rubber content decreases the peak deviator stress which also decreases with increasing number of cycles. Porewater pressure generation showed porewater pressure ratio limits below unity for all the tested samples and a transitional limit of the behaviour between sand-dominated and rubber-dominated seemed to be defined for rubber fractions between 20 and 30%. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2025.