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Residual Flexural Performance of Epoxy Polymer Concrete under Hygrothermal Conditions and Ultraviolet Aging

Authors :
Licheng Zhou
Yiping Liu
Zejia Liu
Liqun Tang
Dongpeng Ma
Zhenyu Jiang
Zhiwei Pan
Source :
Materials, Volume 12, Issue 21, Materials, Vol 12, Iss 21, p 3472 (2019)
Publication Year :
2019
Publisher :
Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute, 2019.

Abstract

Epoxy polymer concrete (EPC) has found increasing applications in infrastructure as a rising candidate among civil engineering materials. In most of its service environments, EPC is inevitably exposed to severe weather conditions, e.g., violent changes in temperature, rain, and ultraviolet (UV) radiation. In this paper, we designed an accelerated aging test for EPC, which includes periodic variation of temperature and water spray, as well as intensive UV-light irradiation, imitating the outdoor environment in South China. The experimental results show that the flexural performance of EPC is found deteriorate with the aging time. An aging process equivalent to four years (UV radiation dose) results in up to 8.4% reduction of flexural strength. To explore the mechanisms of observed performance degradation, the EPC specimen in the four-point-bending test is considered as a layered beam. The analysis indicates that the loss of flexural load-carrying capacity of an aged EPC beam is dominated by the reduction of mechanical properties of the surface layer. The mechanical properties of the surface layer are closely associated with the aging of epoxy mortar, which can be approximated as a reciprocal function of the aging time. By introducing damage to the surface layer into the layered beam, the proposed model demonstrates a good ability to predict the residual flexural strength of EPC during the aging process

Details

Language :
English
ISSN :
19961944
Database :
OpenAIRE
Journal :
Materials
Accession number :
edsair.doi.dedup.....38456b356d7b57bae8f80e8bff5a6dd0
Full Text :
https://doi.org/10.3390/ma12213472