Mortars Made with Fine Granulate from Shredded Tires

Abstract

Changing lifestyles over the past few decades have brought about an increase in the types and volume of waste. Nowadays, waste is considered one of the world’s main problems. The incorporation of waste in structural and nonstructural elements has therefore been studied, primarily in renders. However, data are scarce on the influence of using rubber aggregates from shredded tires in mortars. This work presents a performance-based analysis to test the viability of using these modified mortars for wall coatings. It presents unprecedented analyses of some durability-related properties and the influence of the crushing process in the overall performance of mortars incorporating rubber. Even though the results show, as expected, that the incorporation of rubber particles is detrimental to both compressive and flexural strength, those changes do not impair its use as renders under normal conditions. Furthermore, the incorporation of rubber leads to a significant reduction of the modulus of elasticity of the mortar. The added rubber also improves its impact-resistance characteristics and some other durability characteristics of these modified mortars compared with those of conventional mortars, which shows that this could be a future viable alternative for wall coatings.