Geotechnical Behavior of an Expansive Soil Improved with Waste Tyre Crumb Rubber Determined by Laboratory Tests

The present study focuses on the sustainable solution for the improvement of expansive soils behavior using scrap tyre rubber. With the alarming increase of tyre wastes, the researchers world-wide are looking for sustainable methods to include all types of scrap tyre materials in civil engineering structures. This type of waste is very hard to dispose and its clearly unwanted in any kind of urban-industry. Expansive soils are well known for their problematic behavior and have always caused geotechnical problems causing different types of structural damage at light weight buildings and roads. The expansive soil used in this experimental study is the Bahlui Clay which is analyzed in various conditions and in different mixtures with the waste tyre crumbs. In the laboratory tests different percentages of scrap tyre crumbs along with rubber powder have been used aiming to see some improvements of physical parameters. Results have shown that the waste tyre crumbs can be used as a method of soil stabilization, but only in certain conditions. The 30% scrap tyre addition proved to have a positive influence on the geotechnical properties of the active clay, improving the physical soil parameters such as Atterberg limits, linear contraction, and plasticity index.