Flexural fatigue life analysis of unsaturated polyester-methyl methacrylate polymer concrete

Abstract

Laboratory and statistical evaluations were performed to examine the flexural fatigue performance of unsaturated polyester-methyl methacrylate (UP-MMA) polymer concrete. Target stress levels were 0.9, 0.8, 0.7, and 0.6 with a fixed stress ratio of 0.1. A 5 Hz sinusoidal load with a constant-amplitude frequency was applied to a prismatic specimen (100 x 100 x 400 mm) using a 250-kN universal testing machine (UTM). MMA contents considered were 0, 10, 20, and 30 wt.%. In addition, the two-parameter Weibull distribution was employed to analyze the fatigue life probability distributions of UP-MMA polymer concrete. Three different analysis methods the graphical method, method of moment, and method of maximum likelihood estimation were applied to estimate the distribution parameters of the two parameter Weibull distribution. The results have shown that the two-parameter Weibull distribution describes the fatigue life probability distributions of UP-MMA polymer concrete with quite high statistical correlation coefficients. Also, the goodness-of-the-fit of the fatigue life data obtained was verified by means of the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, which were all accepted at a 5% significance level. Finally, a single-log fatigue equation was derived to predict the fatigue life of UP-MMA polymer concrete. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.