CHARACTERIZATION OF POLYMER CONCRETE WITH CALCAREOUS POWDER

In the last decades new types of concrete had developed or improved their properties. Polymer concrete is used more and more in the construction domain because it has some advantages in comparison with cement concrete, such as: high strength, corrosion resistance and rapid hardening. However, the high cost of polymer concrete is the most important disadvantage. Because of that, obtaining polymer concrete with lower prices is an important objective. Polymer concrete is a composite in which the aggregates are bound together by a resin. The use of different types of addition can reduce the costs of polymer concrete by reducing the resin content. In this study, calcareous powder is added as filler in epoxy polymer concrete. The effects of this type of addition on the properties of polymer concrete were investigated. As a result, the physical-mechanical properties, experimentally determined, were compared with the characteristics of epoxy polymer concrete without addition used as witness. For characterizing this type of polymer concrete, the physical-mechanical properties (such as density, workability, compressive strength, flexural strength, split tensile strength) are presented in the paper. Calcareous powder used as filler, has a good effect on the mechanical properties of epoxy polymer concrete and resulted in a reduction of epoxy resin dosage in the mix.