Thermal conductivity of compacted fill with mine tailings and recycled tire particles

With the advantages of a light weight and improved thermal insulation, recycled tire particles have been utilized as engineered fills either alone or mixed with other geomaterials. To better utilize recycled tire particles, the thermal conductivity of their mixtures with mine tailings is studied as affected by the water content, mixing ratio of tailings and tire crumbs, compactive effort, and size of tire crumbs. The results show a clear correlation between the thermal conductivity and bulk density of the mixtures. Furthermore, the horizontal thermal conductivity is slightly higher than the vertical thermal conductivity and the anisotropic effect is more pronounced for the mixtures with lower water contents. The experimental data are processed via an analysis of variance (ANOVA), and the results indicate that the factors included in the simulation are statistically significant at a confidence level of 95%. A multiple linear regression model is proposed to relate the thermal conductivity with the composition of mixtures and compaction conditions. The interpretation methods developed in this study can be extended to enhance the understanding to the thermal characteristics of compacted geomaterials in engineering applications.