Recycled Rubber as an Aggregate Replacement in Self-Compacting Concrete—Literature Overview

In the past few decades, due to the exponential increase of the world’s population, the number of discarded waste tires has become a serious ecological and environmental problem. Decomposition of waste tire rubber can take longer than 50 years, and every year the number of discarded tires is rapidly growing. With the inclusion of waste tire rubber into self-compacting concrete this global problem can be reduced. Waste tire rubber can be incorporated in self-compacting concrete by partially replacing the natural fine and coarse aggregate, reducing consumption of sand and gravel and preserving these natural materials. In addition, recycling and reusing waste tire rubber avoids the need for tire landfilling, as one of the major ecological problem of the near future. Replacement of natural aggregate with waste tire rubber can have an undesirable influence on the mechanical properties of self-compacting concrete, i.e., compressive strength, flexural strength, splitting tensile strength, and modulus of elasticity, however. On the other hand, replacing natural gravel or sand with waste tire rubber can improve impact resistance, ductility, and fatigue resistance. This paper presents an overview of the literature investigating recycled waste tire rubber used as a fine and/or coarse aggregate replacement in self-compacting concrete and its influence on several essential fresh and hardened self-compacting concrete properties.