The recycling of End-of-Life Tires (EoLT) into Tire-Derived Aggregates (TDA) has attracted considerable attention as a sustainable strategy for improving resource efficiency in concrete construction. While numerous studies have investigated the mechanical benefits of pre-treated TDA in Rubberized Concrete (TRC), limited research has simultaneously evaluated their environmental implications. This review presents a design-oriented analytical assessment of both the mechanical performance and environmental burdens associated with TDA processing and utilization. More than 30 pre-treatment methods were examined, covering crumb rubber production, chemical modification, thermal treatment, and concrete performance. The findings indicate that sodium hydroxide treatment provides the highest flexural strength improvements at 10% crumb rubber replacement. In contrast, partial oxidation, carbon disulfide, acetone, and sulfuric acid treatments enhance compressive strength at replacement levels between 6% and 15%. Cement pre-coating and thermal treatments significantly improve tensile strength and elastic modulus at replacement levels up to 40%. However, treatments that achieve greater mechanical recovery often generate higher environmental burdens, revealing a critical sustainability trade-off. To support sustainable material design, five strategic implementation scenarios were evaluated using Monte Carlo weight-sensitivity analysis, rank-concordance testing, and weighting-free Pareto-efficiency analysis. All three methods consistently identified partial oxidation, thermal, aqua-thermal, and water-based treatments as the most robust options, irrespective of the weighting assigned to mechanical and environmental criteria. Additionally, novel power-law relationships were developed to quantify the influence of TDA particle size on recycling-stage environmental performance. The aggregate-scale model (TDA ≤ 25 mm) showed excellent agreement with recycling-pathway data (R²> 0.975), while treatment-level validation demonstrated that the relationship remained robust (n = 28 treatment methods, R² = 0.99) after normalizing for rubber content. A complementary crumb-scale model (<5 mm) revealed a steeper particle-size exponent (0.70 versus 0.23), demonstrating that environmental burdens increase more rapidly as already-fine rubber is further reduced. The analysis further identified particle size as the dominant driver of recycling-stage environmental impacts, exceeding the influence of rubber content once dosage effects were accounted for. Overall, this study highlights the importance of integrating mechanical performance, environmental assessment, and mix design optimization to develop sustainable TRC systems.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590123026036935