Design and Assessment of a Lightweight Polymer Concrete Utility Manhole

LUCIANO LEONARDI; TERESA M. PIQUE; TOMAS LEIZEROW; HUMBERTO M . BALZAMO; ANALÍA VÁZQUEZ; CELINA BERNAL; ELIANA AGALIOTIS

Advances in Materials Science and Engineering

Hindawi

Año: 2019

1687-8434

Polymer concrete is a composite with polymer instead of portland cement as a binder. It allows optimizing the tensile and cracking strength and the chemical resistance of a concrete structure. In this study, different formulations were assessed in order to optimize a polymer concrete underground utility manhole with minimum weight. Formulations were based on an epoxy-amine system mixed with fine regular-weight aggregates and ultra-lightweight aggregates. The objective was to design and assess an underground utility structure with the epoxy chemical resistance, strength and lightweight and to study whether the replacement of regular-weight aggregates by ultra-lightweight aggregates would contribute to improve the strength and reduce the structure weight. Two polymer concrete systems were designed from its formulation and their mechanical performance were evaluated experimentally. A numerical model was developed for a polymer concrete underground utility structure made from the different formulations. It was simplified as a box subjected to typical soil loads. The size of the box is a standard one. Its minimum wall thickness is specified for sustaining the in-use service pressures obtained from numerical simulation. The model predicted that the epoxy/regular-weight aggregates formulation could be used with a wall thickness significantly smaller than the formulation with ultra-lightweight aggregates. In addition, the underground utility structure made with this formulation would weight six times less than the same box made with a traditional portland cement concrete.