This practice is intended for use of scrap tires including: tire derived aggregate (TDA) comprised of pieces of scrap tires, TDA/soil mixtures, tire sidewalls, and whole scrap tires in civil engineering applications. This includes use of TDA and TDA/soil mixtures as lightweight embankment fill, lightweight retaining wall backfill, drainage layers for roads, landfills and other applications, thermal insulation to limit frost penetration beneath roads, insulating backfill to limit heat loss from buildings, vibration damping layers for rail lines, and replacement for soil or rock in other fill applications. Use of whole scrap tires and tire sidewalls includes construction of retaining walls, drainage culverts, road-base reinforcement, and erosion protection, as well as use as fill when whole tires have been compressed into bales. It is the responsibility of the design engineer to determine the appropriateness of using scrap tires in a particular application and to select applicable tests and specifications to facilitate construction and environmental protection. This practice is intended to encourage wider utilization of scrap tires in civil engineering applications.

Three TDA fills with thicknesses in excess of 7 m have experienced a serious heating reaction. However, more than 100 fills with a thickness less than 3 m have been constructed with no evidence of a deleterious heating reaction (1). Guidelines have been developed to minimize internal heating of TDA fills (2) as discussed in 6.11. The guidelines are applicable to fills less than 3 m thick. Thus, this practice should be applied only to TDA fills less than 3 m thick.