Case Studies - Tirec Group Ltd - Innovation with Environmental Benefits | Tyre blocks, Urro blocks, Tyre bales, Tyre recycling, Used Tyre Collection

Case Studies and Construction Examples

The case studies presented below cover a wide range of applications including roads over soft ground, slope repairs, retaining walls and river and flood protection works. These applications exploit the key characteristics of tyre bales such as their lightweight, their high porosity and permeability, the fact that they are relatively inert, their ease of handling and their versatility.

It is clear that the manufacture of tyre bales and their subsequent use in construction is a highly effective and beneficial use of end of use tyres and has considerable potential for the future.

Flood defence project, River Witham, UK

12,000 tyre bales were used for this project The project involved strengthening and refurbishing of the flood defence embankments between Lincoln and Boston in Lincolnshire. The project took 4 months and serviced around 1.5km of the river embankment during the winter months, something that would not have been possible using conventional clay materials.

Case Study tyre bale embankment core at river Witham flood defence

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Landfill drainage layer project, Powys, Wales, UK

Example of a landfill drainage layer project where tyre bales are known as Used Tyre Derived Aggregate Replacement (UTDAR). Potters Waste Management, at their Bryn Posteg landfill site in Wales, use baled tyres as an UTDAR for the base of their landfill site.

case study tyre bales leachate landfill layer

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Dam wall project, Worcestershire, UK

Tyre bales were substituted for traditional stone and clay materials.

case study reuse of tyre in port, costal and river engineering

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Construction of Road Foundations on Soft Ground

case study construction of road foundations on soft ground

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Lightweight Road Embankment Over Peat, Helmsdale, Scotland, UK

In the Highlands of Scotland many roads are lightly trafficked and serve small, scattered communities. However they may be the only routes connecting the communities with the outside world and their importance is thus greater than the traffic levels alone would suggest. Many of these roads are constructed across areas of peat, with a weak, highly compressible nature leading to a unique set of engineering problems. The use of normal construction materials (bituminous and unbound) often leads to large differential settlements due to the variability of the peat thickness and stiffness. This leads to steps or tilting in the surface, a hazard to road traffic. The use of lightweight materials, such as expanded polystyrene (EPS) to minimize these effects, is usually uneconomic due to the high cost of the materials.

Tyre bales in embankment case study

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Road Construction Over Soft Ground, Chautauqua County, New York State, USA

The Chautauqua County Department of Public Facilities have led a total of five projects involving the use of lightweight tyre bales as a subgrade replacement for roads over soft ground. The tyre bales resulting from the clean up of the Levant tyre dump and from the ongoing tyre amnesty programme were used in these projects.

TRL report Tyre bales in construction

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Road Over Soft Ground in Woodland, , UK

A long section of an un-surfaced road through an area of soft ground in woodland had developed deep ruts as a result of use by four-wheel drive vehicles and motorcycles. Normally this would have been repaired by excavating the rutted area and replacing the soil with free draining granular material, in the form of capping and unbound sub-base. As an alternative, the excavated soil was replaced by tyre bales, with a 150mm layer of crushed natural stone to form the road surface. This resulted in significant cost savings as well as avoiding the use of natural aggregate.

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Access Road over Soft Ground, Nether Dallachy Landfill Site, Fochabers, Moray, UK

The landfill is located at a former sand and gravel quarry near the Moray Firth. The site is typically 5m to 5.5m above Ordnance Datum and low lying parts of the site are subject to flooding in the winter due to seasonal variation in the ground water level. An extension to the existing haul road was required to service a new landfill cell. The surface of the existing haul road is 6.15m above Ordnance Datum (AOD), up to 1.5m of upfill (average 1.0m) was required to ensure the new road was not subjected to winter flooding.

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Slope Failure Repair, Interstate Highway 30, Tarrant County, Texas, USA

The remediation of soil cut slope instability in Tarrant County, Texas has conventionally been achieved using existing or imported soils, with or without modification by hydraulic binders and often in conjunction with an 'H'-beam wall, in order to minimise costs and construction time. More recently consideration has been given to the use of tyre blocks as a partial replacement for soil fill. This approach is considered likely to significantly improve the subsequent long-term stability of the repair, while also providing the benefit of reusing waste tyres. This is especially significant where the in-situ soils comprise high plasticity clays, which may be marginally suitable for such applications, highly moisture sensitive and inherently unstable. Surface or groundwater seepage also may be a contributing factor to slope instability as this region frequently experiences high intensity storms.

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Example of reed bed project

Various ponds for reed bed drainage projects are being built throughout the UK using the blocks as the first line of drainage down to a secondary high-tec SUDS system to reduce foul water to clean.

Picture courtesy of Northern Tyre Recycling Ltd

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