Performance improvement of polymer concrete produced with unsaturated resin, by a post-cure process, polyester fibers and gamma radiation

Abstract

As it is known, production of polymer concrete contemplates polymer resins as main component, for example polyester or epoxy; as well as mineral aggregates, including silica sand and marble. However, it is not common to add polymer fibers, because these sometimes decrease the mechan-ical properties. Thus, they need some physical or chemical modifications for acting as reinforce-ments. For these reasons, in a first experimental stage polymer concrete was produced with 30 wt% polyester resin and 70 wt% marble, at room temperature. Then, polymer concrete was elaborated with the same resin concentration, but the marble concentration was substituted par-tially by adding 0.1, 0.3 and 0.5 wt% of polyester fibers. After, these polymer concretes with fibers as well as those without fibers were exposed to gamma rays at 10, 50 and 100 kGy doses. Finally, the non-irradiated and irradiated polymer concretes were mechanically tested in com-pression. The second experimental stage consisted to produce the same type of polymer concretes described in the first stage, but now applying to each one of them, a post-cure process consisting to heating at 80 ??C during 8 h. The results show increase up to 182% on the deformation and slightly decrease on compressive strength and elasticity modulus, for polymer concretes contain-ing fibers and irradiated. While, for post-cured polymer concretes, the deformation increased up to 194% and the compressive strength up to 8.2%, but the elasticity modulus decreased. Such me-chanical improvements were related with the superficial and thermal modifications on the poly-ester fibers produced by gamma rays.