%0 Journal Article
%T Flexural Fatigue-Life Assessment and Strength Prediction of Glass Fibre Reinforced Polymer Concrete Composites
%A Raman Bedi
%A S. P. Singh
%A Rakesh Chandra
%J ISRN Materials Science
%D 2014
%R 10.1155/2014/928278
%X The paper presents the results of an investigation conducted to assess the fatigue-life and prediction of flexural fatigue strength of polymer concrete composites based on epoxy resin as binder material. Three point flexural fatigue tests were conducted on polymer concrete specimens using MTS servo controlled actuator, to obtain the fatigue lives of the composites at different stress levels. One hundred and thirty-seven specimens of size £¿mm were tested in flexural fatigue. Forty-three static flexural tests were also conducted to facilitate fatigue testing. It has been observed that the probabilistic distribution of fatigue-life of polymer concrete composite (PCC) and glass fibre reinforced polymer concrete composite (GFRPCC), at a particular stress level, approximately follows the two-parameter Weibull distribution, with statistical corelation coefficient values exceeding 0.90. The fatigue strength prediction model, representing S-N relationship, has been examined and the material coefficients have been obtained for GFRPCC containing 0.5% and 1.0% glass fibres. Design fatigue lives for GFRPCC containing different contents of glass fibres have been estimated for acceptable probabilities of failure and compared with those of PCC. 1. Introduction Polymer concrete composites (PCC) have been in use in the domain of civil engineering since the 1960s for various applications. Later on, due to its better properties, the material has been utilized extensively for applications such as pump base plates and machine tool bases, and so forth. Recent studies on machine tools having bases made of PCC and glass fibre reinforced polymer concrete composite (GFRPCC) have concluded that components manufactured on these have better surface finish and tolerance when compared to those with cast iron bases [1¨C3]. The most important reason for this is the vibration damping capability of PCC and GFRPCC which is significantly higher than conventional machine building materials like cast iron [4¨C6]. Fatigue loading is inevitable in these applications and, therefore, accurate characterization of fatigue behaviour of PCC and GFRPCC is of immense importance. Studies on fatigue behaviour of PCC have been reported in literature [7¨C9], but a small number of specimens have been tested in most of these studies and fatigue-life distributions for PCC have not been reported. It is pertinent to note that in investigations wherein the probabilistic analysis of the fatigue data is the prime objective, it is desirable to test relatively large number of specimens at a given stress level to obtain
%U http://www.hindawi.com/journals/isrn.materials.science/2014/928278/