Despite its excellent physical and mechanical properties, polymer concrete has not been widely used owing to its much higher unit price than conventional portland cement concrete. To ensure the economic efficiency of polymer concrete, it is utmost important to reduce the use of polymer binder, which occupies most of the production cost of polymer concrete. Based on the experimental investigations, replacing filler (calcium carbonate) and fine aggregate (river sand) with fly ash and rapid-cooled steel slag (RCSS), which are spherical materials obtainable from industrial by-products, was found to be effective for improving the strength characteristics and durability as well as the cost efficiency of polymer concrete. The product developed in this study successfully reduced the demand for polymer binder by 21.3% compared to the conventional product, which in turn saved the total material costs by 18.5%. Although the use of RCSS showed performance degradation at an elevated temperature condition, considering typical temperature ranges that actual concrete infrastructures experience, it is expected that the polymer concrete using fly ash and RCSS will provide high-level performances as construction and repair materials.
Spherical atomizing reduction steel slag was prepared by atomizing technology using reduction steel slag (ladle furnace slag, LFS) generated from steel industry. In order to develop the mass-recycling technology of atomizing reduction steel slag, polymer concrete composite was prepared using spherical atomizing reduction steel slag instead of fine aggregate (river sand) and coarse aggregate (crushed aggregate), depending on the grain size. Different polymer concrete specimens were prepared with the various proportions of polymer binder and replacement ratios of atomizing reduction steel slag in order to investigate the characteristics of polymer concrete composite. Results showed that compressive strengths of polymer concrete specimens decreased with the increase of replacement ratios of atomizing reduction steel slag, but flexural strengths of the specimens showed a maximum strength at the 50% of replacement ratios of atomizing reduction steel slag. It was concluded that addition ratio of polymer binder, which affect greatly on the prime cost of production of polymer concrete, could be reduced by maximum 18.2 vol% because the workability of the polymer concrete was remarkably improved by using the atomizing reduction steel slag. However, further study is required because the mechanical strength of the specimen using atomizing reduction steel slag was greatly reduced in hot water resistance test.
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