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*Department of Civil Engineering, Kuwait University, P. 0. Box 5969, Safat 13060, Kuwait. E-mail: hisham@civil.kuniv.edu.kw

**Public Authority for Housing Care, Kuwait

ABSTRACT

An experimental investigation was carried out to study the residual fracture toughness of beams made of epoxy modified concrete. The beams were pre-notched with an edge crack at mid span and tested under four point bending after being subjected to different temperatures. The temperatures were varied between 22°C and 200°C (22, 50, 100, 1 50, 200°C). Different percentages of epoxy in the mix were investigated  (0, 10, 15 and 20% by weight of cement). The results show that the residual fracture toughness increases with the increase in epoxy content in the mix and decreases with an increase in temperature A numerical model based on the finite element method in conjunction with the basic fundamentals of fracture mechanics was used to evaluate the fracture toughness of the beams. Experimental sults such as the failure load, unit weight and the modulus of elasticity were used is input for the model and the results were shown to converge to the correct solution for a crack extension of 0.2 mm.

Keywords: Compliance; Concrete; Epoxy; Fracture; Temperature.