Engineered Conservation Structures using Discarded Tires

We have developed ways to utilize discarded tires for erosion control structures, bank stabilization and slope stabilization and erosion control in the form of engineered structures for each of these applications. This paper also describes and illustrates a channel erosion control structure made entirely from individual tires used to form side walls, wing walls and aprons for the structure. In this case the individual tires were bound together with nylon rope to form a flexible structure. This structure was built in a ephemeral wash (gully) on a local ranch near Tucson, AZ and has been in place for over ten years. More recently, engineers from the University of Arizona and the Technological Institute of Nogales (ITN) collaborated on a demonstration project on the ITN campus to construct retaining walls for steep slopes and use arrays of individual tires for slope stabilization on gentler slopes. For the retaining wall, tires were stacked on a footing and anchored to the footing via a reinforcing rod running up through the tires. The individual columns of tires were then tied together and the rod anchored to the soil mass behind the wall using a "duck-bill" anchor and cable.