Cementitious Composites Reinforced with Recycled Fibres

Abstract

Pneumatic tyres are nowadays among the most widespread industrialproducts and, hence, handling tyres that have reached their end-of-life is indeed acritical issue. This Chapter provides readers with the key facts about tyre productionand consumption. Particularly, it describes the raw materials which they are madefrom, and summarises the main classifications currently accepted worldwide. Thetypical product life-cycle is shortly outlined before analysing the possibility ofrecycling waste tyres for producing new products. Relevant properties of concretereinforced with recycled fibres are presented, with special focus on thepost-cracking behaviour of these composite materials. Emphasis is given to thesuitability of using recycled fibres obtained from waste tyres as partial or totalreplacement of industrial steel fibres for obtaining fibre reinforced concrete.