ENGINEERING PROPERTIES OF HANDRAIL USING LIGHTWEIGHT CONCRETE

This thesis presents a new potential alternative material for handrail application in order to replace conventional materials, such as mild steel, wood, etc. This alternative material is polymer concrete, PC composed of binder and filler. The binder used in this study is unsaturated polyester resin. Several industrial by-products have been selected to cast the PCs, including silica fume (SF), fly ash (FA) and palm oil fuel ash (POFA). The utilization of PCs will bring various benefits to the environments. For instance, the replacement of steel usage might reduce the air pollutions caused by the steel manufacturing processes. Less deforestation is due to the reduction of wooden usage. Furthermore, PCs have superior properties, such as good mechanical properties, better chemical resistance, faster curing time, low water absorption, etc. Basically, PCs could achieve more than 85 % of its final strength within one day. Mechanical properties of PCs were tested by compressive strength, flexural strength, impact resistance test and water absorption test. Besides, the durability of PCs was experimented by chemical immersion. All of these testings were conducted as specified in ASTM C579, ASTM C580, ACI committee 544.2R, ASTM C642 and ASTM C267. Two types of chemical solution used in this study are magnesium sulphate heptahydrate (MgSO4·7H2O) and sulphuric acid (H2SO4). The former presented as sulphate attack in soil, where the latter stimulated the acid rain. The results showed that the filler employed in PCs enhanced the compressive strength, but reduced the flexural strength compared to the diluted resin specimens. The impact resistance test also showed that more impact energy is required to break the reinforced specimens. Impact energy is also highly related to the thickness of specimens. PCs have better chemical resistance towards the chosen chemicals. 2-rail handrail systems have been made by using precast polymer concrete. The cost estimation of PCs were also presented in this study