Residual flexural performance of epoxy polymer concrete under hygrothermal conditions and ultraviolet aging

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.