Polymer-Based Composite Materials for Industralised Building System in Flooding Situations

Abstract

Polymer-based composite materials resulted from a combination of a variety of raw materials to form a new composite material. The use of a type of polymer-based composite material, known as the Glass Fibre Reinforced Polymer (GFRP) has been on the increase today. GFRP Industrialised Building System (IBS) has been developed in the form of prefabricated structural beams, slabs, walls, staircases, and trusses for applications in buildings and bridges. For applications of the IBS system especially in areas that are often vulnerable to flooding, special attention needs to be paid to the water/flood-resistant properties of such a system. Most of the existing materials adopted for building construction are not intended to be used in flood environments, as they have a high percentage of water absorption. High water absorption of GFRP will result in the reduction of its mechanical properties. Therefore, the objective of this study is to obtain and improve the GFRP composite properties for use as a flood-resistant structure. The experiments involved materials such as woven fibreglass matrix, polyester resin, fly ash and calcium carbonate. The fly ash and calcium carbonate are introduced as filler materials to study their influence on the mechanical and water absorption properties of the GFRP composite. In total, 21 samples were tested for tensile, compressive and flexural strengths, and also water absorption. The results obtained from tensile tests found that the maximum tensile strength is 172.8 MPa for the composition of 10% of both fly ash and calcium carbonate. Through compression and three-point bending tests, the maximum compressive and flexural strengths are 169.2 MPa and 327.3 MPa, respectively for the composition of 5% fly ash and 15% calcium carbonate. The composition of 5% calcium carbonate and 15% fly ash yielded the lowest water absorption at 0.45%. It was discovered that compared to the conventional concrete, the percentage water absorption of the RHA concrete cured with 5% NaCl absorbs less water with increase in replacement proportions of RHA [9]. In conclusion, calcium carbonate improves mechanical strength while fly ash reduces water absorption.