Impact of waste crumb rubber on concrete performance incorporating silica fume and fly ash to make a sustainable low carbon concrete

The use of environmental-friendly building materials is becoming increasingly popular worldwide. Compared to the normal concrete, rubber-based concrete is considered more durable, environmentally friendly, socially and economically viable. In this investigation, M20 grade concrete was designed and the fine aggregates were replaced with crumb rubber of two different micron sizes (0.221 mm and 0.350 mm). Fly ash (FA) and silica fume (SF) replaces the binder as supplementary cementitious materials at a rate of 0, 5, 10, 15, and 20% by weight. The mechanical properties of concrete including compressive strength, tensile, and flexural strength were determined. The polynomial work expectation validates the response surface approach (RSM) concept for optimizing SF and FA substitution. The maximum compressive strength (22.53 MPa) can be observed for the concrete containing 10% crumb rubber, 15% fly ash and 15% silica fume. The reduced unit weight of the rubberized concrete may be attributed to the lower specific gravity of the rubber particles. Two-way ANOVA with a significance criterion of less than 0.001 has been utilized with modest residual error from the lack of fit and the pure error. The predictive model accurately forecasts the variable-response relationship. Since, the crumb rubber is obtained from wasted tires incorporating FA and SF as a cementitious ingredient, it helps to significantly improve mechanical properties of concrete and reduce environmental degradation.

Automated summary

The use of rubber-based concrete as an environmentally-friendly building material is gaining popularity worldwide. This study investigates the mechanical properties of M20 grade concrete with different proportions of crumb rubber, fly ash, and silica fume. The results show that the optimum combination of 10% crumb rubber, 15% fly ash, and 15% silica fume results in the highest compressive strength of 22.53 MPa. The incorporation of crumb rubber, fly ash, and silica fume in the concrete significantly improves its mechanical properties and reduces environmental degradation.