Influence of substrate roughness and bonding agents on the bond strength between old and new concrete

This research aims to study factors affecting the strength of adhesion between old concrete and new concrete. Among the factors that have been studied in this research are the type of bonding material and the roughness of the surface adhesion, four types of bonding materials (EPICHOR-1768, C-Latex, SikaBond-T21, EPICHOR-500) have been selected because they are available in local markets. A wire brush is used in order to increase the roughness of sample surfaces. The pull off and slant shear tests have been adopted to assess the bonding strength between the test the old and new concrete. 30 cylindrical samples (7 cm diameter) have been examined by pull-off test, also slant shear test was conducted on 40 samples (10 cmx10 cmx30 cm). The obtained results showed that there is an active role for the bonding material as well as the surface roughness to increase the strength of adhesion between the old and new concrete. Also, it showed that the best of these bonding materials is EPICHOR-1768 because of its significant impact in increasing the strength of the adhesion between the old and new concrete where the percentage of increase 124% in the pull-off test and 48% in slant shear test, compared to the reference sample for each test. As well, as a result of roughening the surface by brush, the strength of adhesion reaches 4% increase in the pull-off test and 23% in the slant shear test compared with the reference sample for each test, which demonstrates the importance of surface roughness to increase the bonding strength between the old and new concrete.