Mechanical properties of polymer concretes containing different amount of hematite or colemanite

Polymer concretes (PCs) were created by using varying concentrations of silica sand as aggregate and also hematite, colemanite and a commercial epoxy resin. Hematite is known to exhibit radiation shielding properties. Mechanical performance was evaluated including unit weight, pulse velocity, compressive strength, flexural strength, splitting tensile strength, modulus of elasticity and dynamic elastic modulus. As expected, mechanical properties depend on the resin concentration, the aggregate type and aggregate content in the mixture. Hematite particles have a larger effect than colemanite on mechanical properties of PCs. Inclusion of hematite provides significant improvement of the mechanical properties studied PCs in comparison to PC with silica sand only.