Waterproofing of Roof With Discarded Tyre Rubber Crumb

Published on 16 Apr 2022. Written by Vinay Raj

Around 110,00,000 new vehicles are been added to Indian roads every year. Due to this, about 3 crores of tyres are been discarded by the vehicle users every year and causing a potential threat to the environment.

Even if tyres are recycled yet a huge number of discarded tyres are been added to landfills or tyre dumps. The generation of waste tyres now far exceeds than the tyres being recycled. This dumped and discarded tyres will cause significant environmental problems to the earth, instead, this waste rubber tyres can be used in civil engineering constructions.

Cement, aggregates, rubber and water mixture all have good properties individually. Rubber crumb has a drawback of lower strength due to its poor bonding with the concrete matrix. We knew that concrete is a popular and good construction material but it has limitations like, shrinkage, low energy absorption, low ductility, low tensile strength and cracking associated with hardening and curing. So, it can be tested by iterating the content of fine aggregate and coarse aggregates partially with other materials.

Rubber has many properties that make it a thinkable material for waterproofing concrete. But waterproofing concrete is not possible because any material cannot be impervious to water due to the pressure it exerts on it over time. This can benefit the community due to the fact that rubber tire crumbs are cheaper than other aggregates and sometimes they can be obtained at no cost at all.

Requirements:

Need for Waste tyres as they are used in this project

Knowledge of mix design.

While performing the project these properties of the rubber tyres are considered:

Density: Tyres are slightly heavier than water and will sink in water unless the air which is partially entrapped in the tyre makes it float. This only occurs with fine crumb rubber or whole tyres.

Moisture absorption: Tyres can trap the water on the surface, but they are relatively impervious to absorption. From different studies, it is found that the maximum water absorption of tyres is 2-4%.

Thermal Insulation: Tyres are made of rubber and it is a poor thermal conductor. It can provide better thermal insulation than aggregate or soil.

Acoustic Insulation: Rubber tyre is a poor acoustic conductor, so it is used as a good insulator for acoustics.

Project Implementation:

Collect the used tyres and reduce the size with mechanical cutters and remove the steel fiber. Then it can be reduced further by crusher etc.
Use them in the concrete mix and check the results with the native concrete mixes.

Advantages:

Utilization of waste material
All materials are easily available
Having lower density, it can reduce the load on the roof
Flexible materials which do not crack
Treatment cost is about equal per square feet including labour as per traditional waterproofing techniques, which can further reduce if materials are purchased in bulk

Conclusion:

In this project, we are using the waste material and saving the environment to some extent and it is of free of cost and helpful to society.

Kit required to develop Waterproofing of Roof With Discarded Tyre Rubber Crumb:

Technologies you will learn by working on Waterproofing of Roof With Discarded Tyre Rubber Crumb:

Waterproofing of Roof With Discarded Tyre Rubber Crumb

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