Evaluating the bond strength between concrete substrate and repair mortars with full-factorial analysis

Concrete structures need repairing due to various reasons such as deteriorative effects, overloading, poor quality of workmanship and design failures. Cement based repair mortars are the most widely used solutions for concrete repair applications. Various factors may affect the bond strength between concrete substrate and repair mortars. In this paper, the effects of polymer additives, strength of the concrete substrate, surface roughness, surface wetness and aging on the bond between concrete substrate and repair mortar has been investigated. Full factorial experimental design is employed to investigate the main and interaction effects of these factors on the bond strength. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) under design of experiments (DOE) in Minitab 14 Statistical Software is used for the analysis. Results showed that the interaction bond strength is higher when the application surface is wet and strength of the concrete substrate is comparatively high. According to the results obtained from the analysis, the most effective repair mortar additive in terms of bonding efficiency was styrene butadiene rubber (SBR) within the investigated polymers and test conditions. This bonding ability improvement can be attributed to the self-flowing ability, high flexural strength and comparatively low air content of SBR modified repair mortars. On the other hand, styrene acrylate rubber (SAR) modified mortars was found incompatible with the concrete substrate.