Abstract
Concrete structures suffer from the impact of many harmful attacking materials that affect theproperties of the main material in them, which is concrete. These structures are also, exposedto the negative impact of many hostile environments such as soils containing harmful salts andharmful acids. A number of precautions should be considered in order to protect the concreteused in such structures. Adding polymer to concrete components as a percentages weight ofcement is one of the methods for producing polymer-modified concrete, which has lowpermeability, better mechanical properties and is more resistant to the negative effects ofharmful environmental factors. The utilization of polymers could help in protecting structuresand enhancing concrete strength. In this study, concrete mixes were prepared with inclusion ofstyrene butadiene rubber (SBR) polymer at four percentages (0%, 5%, 7% and 10% by cementweight). Co-polymers of butidine with styrene (styrene-butadine rubber (SBR)), are a group oflarge-volume synthetic rubbers. High adhesion occurs between the polymer films that formand cement hydrates. This action gives improves the properties of concrete such as flexuraland compressive strength and gives also a higher durability. The investigation was extended toevaluate the compressive strength of the SBR concrete mixes immersed in three types ofwaters: tap, drainage and ground water, at three different ages. The results showed that SBRpolymer enhanced the compressive strength of concrete significantly. A comparison betweenreduction in strength of concretes immersed in these three types of waters was also presented.Moreover, the presence of SBR polymer led to reduced loss in strength of concrete specimensimmersed in drainage and ground water. A proposed model to determine the compressivestrength of concrete specimens immersed in drainage and ground waters was deduced. Thismodel could be a helpful tool for rapid and easy estimation of the strength of concretespecimens immersed in drainage and ground water at different contents of SBR polymer. Theresults showed the highest improve in compressive strength to be associated with 7% SBRmixes at the three tested ages. The increases in this strength at days 7, 28 and 56 with inclusionof 7% SBR polymer were 112.8%, 113.9% and 116%, respectively, compared to OPC mix.
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