Have a few old tires you want to get rid of? How about chopping them up
and using the rubber pieces to reinforce your slopes?
According to senior James Cogan Jr., it's not a bad idea.
Cogan, a civil engineering major, has completed an independent research
project that suggests this might be a viable solution to disposing of old tires. He
recently presented his findings at the National Conference on Undergraduate Research at
Salisbury (Maryland) State University, and at Union's Steinmetz Symposium. His
advisor was Ashraf Ghaly, assistant professor of engineering.
Cogan said he got the idea from an engineering journal he read, but
tried implementing their idea with smaller scraps of rubber. He used scrap rubber pieces
approximately three millimeters in diameter, mixing them with 90 percent sand to optimize
the stability of the earth slope and safety factors.
“It's really just another way to use scrap tires, rather than
sending them to a landfill,” Cogan said, adding that we send about 250 million tires
to landfills each year. Cogan hopes we might reduce that number. “We already recycle
bottles and cans successfully – this is just another way to expand upon
recycling.”
A 1984 graduate of Colonie High School and a resident of Albany, Cogan
recently returned to college to earn his bachelor's degree.