Vinyl-ester-based polymer concrete incorporating high volume fly ash under tensile, compressive, and flexural loads

The utilization of innovative, lightweight, durable, and ecologically friendly polymer concrete is becoming more popular. Therefore, this research was conducted to investigate the mechanical performance of polymer concrete produced using Vinyl Ester (VE) resin and high-volume Fly Ash (FA) filler with a focus on compressive, tensile, and flexural strength of strong and weak axes using a three-point flexural test. It is important to note that the resin varied from 20 to 90%, FA from 10 to 20%, Mepoxe (MK) catalyst was 4.5%, and Cobalt (Co) was 1% of resin volume. Moreover, cube specimens were used to determine compressive strength and specific gravity at 3 days, cylindrical specimens were also used to determine compressive strength at the age of 1 and 2 days, and dog-bone-shaped specimens were used for tensile strength. This research also applied a three-point flexural test to both the strong and weak axes of the specimens. The result showed that the specimen with 30% VE and 70% FA (RUN-3) had the most effective compressive strength, specific gravity, price, and casting simplicity or workability as by the 66,2 MPa recorded for compressive strength and 1.88 gr/cm³ for specific gravity with two stages of elastic and plastic failures. The RUN-3 mixture was also used to produce cylindrical specimens and tensile strength was found to be 11.55 MPa while flexural strength in the transverse and lateral axis was 53.74 MPa, and 57.69 MPa respectively.