Enhancing acoustic performance of rubberised concrete using granulated blast furnace slag

In urban and developed cities, reducing the noise pollution is essential because it is a serious yet often overlooked environmental health issue that greatly impacts public health, economic performance, and overall quality of life. One effective solution is the installation of noise-resistant materials in buildings, such as sound-absorbing pervious concrete. Rubber crumb wastes (TRCWs) derived from discarded tires has been investigated for many years as a substitute for natural fine aggregates in concrete. Studies indicate that incorporating tire rubber can improve several properties, including toughness, resistance to impact and fatigue, vibration damping, noise reduction and thermal insulation. Unlike, replacing aggregate with rubber generally causes a decrease in strength which limited it applications. To address this issue, the present study employed granulated blast furnace slag (GBFS) as a modifier to enhance the bond strength of rubberized concrete. To develop noise-reducing concrete, TRCW was incorporated at varying proportions (5%, 10%, 20%, and 30% by volume) as a partial replacement for both fine and coarse aggregates in GBFS–modified rubberised concrete. The proposed modified concrete’s acoustic properties in terms of sound absorption and transmission loss was evaluated using the impedance tube test. From the obtained results, it’s found the replacing cement by 20% of GBFS enhanced the compressive strength by 26.6% at age of 28 days. Moreover, the results shown the possibility to replacing the natural fine or/and coarse aggregates up to 10% of TRCWs without loss on strength performance. However, the increasing level of replacement to 30% resulted significant drop on strength performance (24.7%). For the acoustic performance, it’s found that GBFS-modified concretes with 30% of coarse TRCWs aggregates enhanced the noise reduction coefficient (NRC) by 137.7%. In addition, the modified concrete containing 30% of TRCWs showed potential as an acoustic absorber for its high ability to absorb sound energy at 500 to 2000 Hz. The combination increases particularly between 700 and 1300 Hz (traffic noise), therefore making it a good and cost-effective flooring system that also provides enhanced acoustic insulation capacity.