Polymer concrete is a composite material made by impregnating a conventional concrete with monomers like methyl methacrylate or styrene, then polymerizing them to fill its pores and voids. This reduces porosity and improves strength and durability properties. Three main types are polymer impregnated concrete, polymer cement concrete, and polymer concrete. Polymer impregnated concrete uses precast concrete impregnated with monomer then polymerized. It exhibits higher strength, stiffness, and durability compared to conventional concrete.

2. Polymer Concrete

8. Polymer Concrete
The porosity due to air-voids, water voids or due to the inherent porosity of gel
structure itself. On account of the porosity, the strength of concrete is naturally
reduced. It is conceived by many research workers that reduction of porosity results
in increase of strength of concrete.
Therefore, process like vibration, pressure application spinning etc., have been
practiced mainly to reduce porosity.
All these methods have been found to be helpful to a great extent, but none of
these methods could really help to reduce the water voids and the inherent porosity
of gel, which is estimated to be about 28%. The impregnation of monomer and
subsequent polymerization is the latest technique adopted to reduce the inherent
porosity of the concrete,
to improve the strength and other properties of concrete

10. 1. Polymer Impregnated Concrete (PIC).
2. Polymer Cement Concrete (PCC).
3. Polymer Concrete (PC).
Type of Polymer Concrete

11. Polymer impregnated concrete is one of the widely used
polymer composite.
It is nothing but a precast conventional concrete, cured and
dried in oven, or by dielectric heating from which the air in
the open cell is removed by vacuum.
Then a low viscosity monomer is diffused through the open
cell and polymerized by using radiation, application of heat
or by chemical initiation
Polymer Impregnated Concrete (PIC)

12. Methyl methacrylate (MMA)
Styrene
Acrylonitrile
T-Butyl styrene
Monomers

16. Polymer cement concrete is made by mixing cement,
aggregates, water and monomer.
Such plastic mixture is cast in moulds, cured, dried and
polymerized. The monomers that are
used in PCC are:
(a) Polyster-styrene.
(b) Epoxy-styrene.
(c) Furans.
(d) Vinylidene Chloride.
Polymer Cement Concrete (PCC)

17. Polymer concrete is an aggregate bound with a polymer binder instead of Portland
cement as in conventional concrete. The main technique in producing PC is to
minimize void volume in the aggregate mass so as to reduce the quantity of polymer
needed for binding the aggregates.
This is achieved by properly grading and mixing the aggregates to attain the
maximum density and minimum void volume.
The graded aggregates are prepacked and vibrated in a moulds. Monomer is then
diffused up through the aggregates and polymerization is initiated by radiation or
chemical means.
A Silone coupling agent is added to the monomer to improve the bond strength
between the polymer and the aggregate. In case polyester resins are used no
polymerization is required.
Polymer Concrete (PC)

18. Stress-Strain Relationship
Compressive Strength
Tensile Strength
Flexural Strength
Creep
Shrinking
Durability
Properties of Polymer Impregnated Concrete

20. PIC has a nearly linear stress-strain relationship to failure. There is very little departure from
linearity up to 90% of ultimate strength and there is no abrupt change at the
proportional limit. The stress strain curves for Styrene-TMPTMA impregnated concrete also show
the same characteristics as for MMA impregnated concrete. The modulus of elasticity increased
from 27 GPa for impregnated specimen to 49 GPa for MMA impregnated specimens.
Stress-Strain Relationship

23. The effect of polymer loading on the compressive strength in PIC Using methyl methacrylate as
monomer and with a polymer loading of 6.4%, strength of the order of 144 Mpa (thermal
catalytic process was 130 Mpa) have been obtained using radiation technique of polymerization.
The control specimen had compressive strength of 38 MPa
Compressive Strength & Tensile
Strength

26. Polymer impregnated concrete with polymer loading of 5.6% MMA and polymerized by
radiation have shown flexural strength 3.6 times more than that of the control specimen, i.e.
the flexural strength was increased to 18.8 MPa from 5.2 MPa.
Compressive Creep deformation of MMA impregnated concrete and styrene—
impregnated concrete has been observed to be in direction opposite to that of the applied
load i.e., Negative Creep. After the typical initial movement during load application, these
concretes expand under sustained compression
Flexural Strength & Creep

28. Freeze Thaw Resistance
Polymer impregnated concrete has shown excellent resistance to freeze-thaw MMA impregnated
and radiation polymerized specimens have withstood 8110 cycles of freeze-thaw compared to
740 cycles in case of unimpregnated concrete. Even partially impregnated concrete withstood
2310 cycles.
Resistance to Sulphate Attack
it has been observed that there is at least 200% improvement in the resistance of polymer
impregnated concrete and 89% improvement in the case of partially impregnated concrete
over the conventional concrete.
Durability

30. Acid Resistance
The acid resistance of PIC has been observed to improve by 1200% when exposed to 15% HCI
for 1395 days.
Water Absorption
A maximum reduction of 95% in water absorption has been observed with
concrete containing 5.9% polymer loading
Durability