Abstract:
The construction industry has highly praised Engineered Cementitious Composites
(ECC) due to their exceptional qualities such as strength, ductility and permeability which
makes them different from the traditional concrete. Nonetheless, using natural sand
extensively when making ECCs has led to fears that this valuable material may run out
soon. Conversely, disposing of waste rubber is becoming a bigger problem day by day
thereby creating environmental challenges that should be tackled head on. This concern can
be solved by mixing crumb rubber with ECC though usually it weakens the materials.
In this research a novel approach was proposed by replacing sand partially with
waste tire rubber powder and textile waste fibers were introduced to improve mechanical
properties. The aim of this research was to address the challenges of natural resource
depletion and waste tire disposal. Extensive testing was done on ECC samples containing
different percentages of discarded rubber (10, 20 and 30) and textile waste fibers of 2%,
including measures of compressive strength, splitting tensile strength, and flexural test.
Results showed that the incorporation of waste tire rubber powder and textile fibers led to
improvements in ECC mechanical properties. The strength we got in this research showed
that this project achieved a compressive strength of 36.34 MPa, it showed an increase in
tensile strength that was 10.402 MPa and an increase in flexural strength of 7.48 MPa.
This method of thinking outside the box could result in a different form of ECC that
not only has the same strength as traditional concrete but also helps preserve our
environment by saving sand and using old tires again.
