SDGs supported:
“More than 3 million tons of waste tyres are produced annually in Europe only, whilst billions of tyres are produced worldwide. Reuse of waste tyres is a major challenge. In this respect, we use recylced materials to both reduce the wastes and protect the environment and to improve the performance of transport assets”
We deliver sustainable solutions toward more resilient infrastructure:
- reuse of tyres towards environmental protection and mitigation of hazard effects, towards economic design and minimal damage of infrastructure assets
- use of compressible inclusions that contain reused tyre-derived aggregates as a means to isolate bridge abutment from the backfill soil
- backfills comprising of optimised sand and granulated rubber mixtures to mitigate the earthquake risk of critical infrastructure assets
Reduction of soil pressures at the bridge abutment by use of compressible inclusions (Source: Mitoulis S, Palaiochorinou A, Georgiadis I, Argyroudis S (2016). Extending the application of integral abutment bridges in earthquake prone areas by using novel isolators of recycled materials. Earthquake Engineering and Structural Dynamics 45(14):2283–2301)
Reduction of settlements at the bridge backfill with use of rubber-soil mixture (Source: Argyroudis S, Palaiochorinou A, Mitoulis S, Pitilakis D (2016). Use of rubberised backfills for improving the seismic response of Integral Abutment Bridges, Bull of Earthquake Eng, 14(12):3573–3590)
Major collaborations:
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki – Research Unit of Soil Dynamics & Geotechnical Earthquake Engineering
Tun Abdul Razak Research Centre (TARRC)
Funding received: Innovate UK (2015)