Effect of basalt,silica sand and fly ash on the mechanical properties of quaternary polymer concretes

The aim of this study is to manufacture quaternary polymer concretes (PCs) and optimize the weight percentages of the epoxy resin, ultrafine fly ash, silica sand and basalt aggregates. For this, we first manufactured binary PCs of epoxy/basalt, epoxy/silica sand and epoxy/fly ash and then studied the mechanical properties such as compressive, flexural and splitting tensile strength. The mixture design method was used as an approach for design of experiment to reduce the number of tests and optimize the mechanical strength of the PC. The best weight percentages of the PC components were 25 (epoxy), 5 (fly ash), 52.5 (silica sand) and 17.5 (basalt). The compressive, flexural and splitting tensile strength of the quaternary PC were equal to 94.1, 39.0 and 11.8, which were 3.76, 11.1 and 6.5 times higher than those of ordinary Portland cement, respectively. Finally, a scanning electron microscopy test was implemented to study the microstructure of the PC.