01128866

Component

Waste tires can occupy valuable landfill space. Waste tires in stockpiles, legally or illegally dumped, may produce tire fires that are very hard to put out, and cause significant public health and environmental concerns. There are approximately 300 million waste tires generated each year in the United States. Today, most of the tires can be reutilized as tire derived fuels, in civil engineering applications, or as rubberized asphalt in roadway pavements. However, there are many challenges that prevent the successful and sustainable uses of waste tires in these areas. To overcome these challenges and to promote the sustainable uses of waste tires in civil and transportation engineering, teaching materials were developed to educate the undergraduate students who are the future engineers. To make the education program more effective and to teach more students, a series of lecture materials in more than ten different courses, instead of one elective waste management class, were developed. These lectures cover topics from freshman level such as introduction to civil engineering design, through the junior level such as strength of materials, materials testing, and finally to senior level classes such as soil mechanics, foundations, environmental, concrete, pavement materials and transportation. Each lecture developed has been taught in a real class environment at a university. The outcome has shown that the lectures greatly enhanced the students’ knowledge on using waste tires in civil engineering applications and transportation. The educational process can be used as a template to promote the sustainable usage of other recycle materials.

01120148

09-0434

English

21p

2009

Transportation Research Board 88th Annual Meeting

DVD

Figures; Photos; References (25) ; Tables (1)

Civil engineering; College students; Education and training; Environmental impacts; Landfills; Recycled materials; Research; Sustainable development; Tires

Education and Training; Environment; Highways; I15: Environment

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2009 Paper #09-0434

TRIS, TRB

Jan 30 2009 4:41PM