Effect of crumb rubber on concrete strength and chloride ion penetration resistance

This paper present the effect of crumb rubber on its ability to produce concrete with structural strength when it was used directly from the plant without any treatment process. Crumb rubber was added as fine aggregates at 0%, 10%, 15% and 20% of sand volume meanwhile silica fume was added at 10% by cement weight. Three main series of concrete namely rubberized concrete with water-to-cement ratio of 50% and 35% was design and development of compressive strength was observed from day 7 until 91 days. Also, effectiveness of crumb rubber under flexural strength and splitting tensile strength was studied at 28 days curing age. Effect of crumb rubber on durability performance was done on chloride ion penetration resistance performance by migration test and by immersion in salt water. Chloride ion diffusion in rubberized concrete by migration test was carried out under steady state condition using effective diffusion coefficient, De meanwhile, immersion test in salt water was conducted under non-steady state condition using apparent diffusion coefficient, Da. Results showed that compressive strength was decrease with the increasing of crumb rubber in the mixture. Even though the strength were reducing with the inclusion of crumb rubber, the reduction were less than 50% and it achieved acceptable structural strength. Chloride transport characteristics were improved by increasing amount of CR and rubberized concrete with w/c = 0.35 gave better resistance against chloride ion compared to w/c = 0.50 with more than 50% difference. Silica fume provide slightly strength increment compared to normal rubberized concrete and the same behavior was observed during chloride ion diffusion test