Waste tires that have been cut into chips yield a material that is coarse grained, free draining, and has low unit weight, thus offering significant advantages for use as retaining wall backfill. The major technical concern, however, is high compressibility. A new geosynthetic-reinforced soil (GRS) retaining wall system, referred to as the “CTI-MSB wall”has recently been developed by the Colorado Transportation Institute. One of the most important features of the wall is that the geosynthetic reinforcement is not attached to the fullheight concrete facing panel; therefore, the backfill can settle substantially without causing distress in the facing panel. A well-controlled loading test was conducted to investigate the performance of the CTI-MSB wall with shredded tires as backfill. The test was conducted inside a plane strain testing facility. The test wall was threemeter high. The reinforcement was not wrapped at the face. The loading test indicated that the CTI-MSB wall can successfully accommodate the highly compressible shredded tires as backfill.
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