Engineering Commons^™

Bond Life Of Structural Epoxy-Concrete Systems Under Accelerated Hygrothermal Aging, Philip W. Hopkins

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A laboratory study was conducted to investigate possible quantitative and qualitative methods for determining the bond life of structural epoxies externally bonded to concrete substrates. Three concrete mixtures, two surface preparation methods, and three structural epoxies were used creating eighteen combinations of bonded systems. Direct tension (pull-off) specimens were prepared from which a subset was submerged in heated water per a prescribed accelerated aging protocol for up to 200 days. A novel test fixture was designed to facilitate controlled-rate testing of the pull-off specimens. A total of 324 specimens were intermittently removed from submersion exposure and tested without replacement. An …