Iranian Journal of Materials Science and Engineering

Abstract:

This work was designed to investigate the simultaneous effect of both water-to-cement (W/C) and polymer-to-cement

(P/C) ratios on flexural strength of type V Portland cement pastes containing polyvinyl alcohol. The obtained results

confirmed the strong effect of W/C-ratio on the effectiveness of the added polymer so that there exist optimum values

for both W/C and P/C-ratios. Pastes prepared at optimum W/C and P/C-ratios of respectively 0.30 and 0.016 exhibited

the highest flexural strength which was more than two times the strength of unmodified pastes. Further measurements

on hardened paste specimens prepared at W/C=0.30 show that increasing the P/C-ratio increases dry bulk specific

gravity of the specimens and result in significant reductions in both total permeable pore volume and water absorption

of the specimens confirming the effective packing caused by polyvinyl alcohol acetate.