Green Approach for Concrete Pavement

Recycled waste products have been used in the construction field for many years. This is done to save the environment and to minimize the amount of waste to landfill. Some of these dumped materials might have adverse issues that impacts the health of the society. One of Kuwait’s major waste products is the used tyres. The volume of the disposed tyres has reached dangerous levels that it now forms a serious concern for Kuwait’s environment. Additionally, Kuwait experiences very harsh weather conditions that accelerates the reduction of the life span of its infrastructure, including concrete pavements. Kuwait’s pavement is subject to a frequent and intensive maintenance schedule due to the harsh weather conditions. Therefore, the aim of this project is to use waste materials (such as used tyres) to reduce environmental problems and improving the lifespan of Kuwait’s infrastructure. Using recycled shredded tyres will increase a concrete pavement performance in high temperature areas and also increases the durability of pavement. In this research, different proportions of shredded rubber and steel cords (found in the reinforcement of tyres) will be investigated experimentally; the concrete mix design will be developed in the laboratory and the stress-strain outputs will be carried out to investigate the module of elasticity and fracture mechanism of concrete pavement. A finite elementbased model by using ABAQUS software will be developed to validate the results obtained experimentally. The most promising mix design will be used in the numerical model to evaluate the performance in terms of stability and durability of concrete pavement made from the same mix design.