The construction industry increasingly requires products that are cost effective and easy to use, to enable fast track application whilst achieving a high physical performance. Incorporating a polymer in a cementitious mix brings key advantages, particularly in terms of workability, abrasion and impact resistance, with the resulting physical and chemical properties dependent upon the nature of the polymer material and the quantity used in relation to the cement phase.

This Rapra Handbook is intended to provide an insight into the uses of polymers within the construction industry. It describes the conception of polymer-modified cementitious materials through to the array of polymer-based or polymer-modified material utilised in modern day construction.

It not only covers the use of polymers in direct combination with cement but polymer concrete, impregnation of polymers into the concrete substrate and other polymer-based products, (i.e., coatings and adhesives). Both natural and synthetic polymers are reviewed.

This book is aimed at all those who are working with cement, and also at anyone who needs more information about this most versatile of materials, offering insight into:

the common polymers used in cementitious materials polymer concrete polymer Portland cement concrete reinforcement using synthetic fibres adhesives and coatings