Investigation on Improvement in Shear Performance of Reinforced-Concrete Beams Produced with Recycled Steel Wires from Waste Tires

In parallel with the increase in vehicle sales worldwide, waste tires are becoming an increasing problem. The storage and disposal of these waste tires are critical environmental problems. Re-using these wastes in different areas instead of being disposed of is vital in preventing environmental pollution and creating new low-cost products. From this motivation, this paper investigates the properties of traditional reinforced-concrete beam with recycled steel wires (RSWT) obtained from the waste tires. RSWT were added to reinforced-concrete beam between 1% and 3% by weight with an increment of 1%. In total, 9 cubes, 12 cylinders and 12 reinforced-concrete beams were cast and tested to obtain the compressive, splitting tensile and flexural strengths, respectively. RSWT added to the concrete by 1%, 2% and 3% increased the compressive strength by 17.2%, 30.8% and 46.4%, respectively, compared to the reference concrete. In split tensile strength, 14.4%, 25.1% and 36.7% increases were observed, respectively. This showed that there was an effective increase in the compressive and tensile strength of concrete with the increase of fiber content. Although the effect of fiber content in samples with high stirrup spacing (27 cm) provides significant benefit in improving the beam behavior, the effect of fibers was more limited as the stirrup spacing decreased (20 cm and 16 cm). An approximation of over 91% was obtained between the analytical calculations and the experimental results. This shows that the analytical calculations given in the standards can be used for new experimental studies.