Material Durability And Weather

The deterioration of a particular material depends on how and to what extend it interacts with its surrounding. Thus, durability is definitely one of the main concerns in designing as it directly relates to the maintenance of the structural integrity of a structure throughout its service life.

Malaysia's tropical climate can pose hazard to many concrete structures as high temperature and high humidity can affect the chemical interaction between concrete's alkaline property and its surrounding. In this case, concrete durability is related to its ability to withstand exposure to condition such as UV radiation, temperature, rain and wind.

In many advanced countries, epoxy resins concrete are used in many applications such as aircraft, aerospace, and composite reinforcing concrete products which includes repair and appraisal works in civil engineering particularly as reinforcement in concrete.

The resin is formed by the chemical reactions of epoxy groups with amines, alcohols, phenols and others.

Epoxy resin concretes exposure to four season's climate has been investigated and significant effect was found on the strength properties of the concretes. There is a need to understand the behaviour of epoxy resin concrete under Malaysia climatic stress. When the behaviour of its strength is understood, design durability and repair works for structures with epoxy resins in this region can be predicted.

The objectives of this research, therefore, are to construct a correlation between atmospheric exposure and wet-dry condition with the durability of epoxy resins concrete; to predict durability from the permeability, porosity, and shrinkage testing; and to compare atmospheric exposure with laboratory conditions.

This research is conducted by Idawati Ismail, Mohd Ibrahim Safawi M Zaid and Azida Rashid of Universiti Malaysia Sarawak and Abdul Aziz Ismail of Universiti Teknologi Malaysia.