EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION THE MECHANICAL AND STRUCTURAL STRENGTHS OF CONCRETES COMBINED RUBBER WASTES AND FIBERS

The current research deals with the use of waste rubber powder with different forms and percentages as a replacement for the fine aggregates in concrete production for the purpose of examining different mechanical and structural properties at an experimental level. The mixed design of common concrete as well as other mixed designs having waste rubber powder were constructed. The amounts of waste rubber were equivalent to 5, 10, and 15% of actual volume of the aggregate. To remove the negative effects on some mechanical properties of the product such as compressive and tensile strength and impact resistance, the synthetic Polyphenylene Sulfide (PPS) fibers known as synthetic complex fibers with 0.75 and 1.5% were added to the concrete having waste rubber powder. The first part of this research examines the effects of the combination of fibers with waste rubber powder on the compressive, tensile, flexural strength, and impact resistance of specimens. Also, in the second part of this research, six concrete slabs were constructed with the structural performance of such concrete in road construction under elastic basement under direct loading. The displacement-load curve of the samples as well as the failure pattern of the samples were observed and analyzed. The result of the experiments on the standard specimen in the first part of this research showed that despite the decrease in compressive strength due to the simultaneous addition of rubber powder compared to the common concrete samples, the tensile, flexural strength, and impact resistance were improved compared to the samples constructed with common concrete. By replacing 15% rubber powder instead of the fine aggregates, the final impact resistance increased up to 48%. Simultaneous addition of 0.75 % fibers and 5% rubber doubled the impact resistance of the concrete. It is worth mentioning that 1.5% addition of fibers to the concrete having 5% rubber power increased final impact resistance up to 5.72 times of that of Ref concrete. The results of the second part of this research showed that the final capacity of fiber-rubber concrete slabs under elastic basement to have favorite flexural behavior as concrete pavement compared to common concrete slab increased up to 50%; meanwhile, the amount of absorbed energy and the strength of combined concrete slabs of rubber wastes and fibers were 3 times higher than those made by common concrete in the reference sample.