Epoxy polymer concrete (EPC) has found various applications in civil engineering. To enhance the flexural performance of EPC, two kinds of short natural fibers with high specific strength (sisal fibers and ramie fibers) have been incorporated into EPC. The results of mechanical tests show that a small loading of natural fibers (0.36 vol%) can significantly increase the flexural strength of EPC by 25.3% (ramie fibers) or 10.4% (sisal fibers). This enhancement is achieved without any sacrifice of compressive strength of EPC. The reinforcing effects of short natural fibers on the flexural properties and compressive properties of EPC decrease with further increase in fiber content, due to the insufficient wetting of fibers by epoxy resin which results in poor interfacial bonding. The reinforcing mechanisms of short natural fibers are explored according to the observation of fracture surfaces and micromechanical modelling. It is found that the parallel model based on the rule of mixture can be a good approximation to describe the improvement in flexural strength of the short natural fiber reinforced EPC at low fiber volume fractions. epoxy polymer concrete (EPC), natural fibers, flexural strength, micromechanics models

Epoxy polymer concrete (EPC) has been widely used in civil engineering nowadays due to its excellent mechanical properties and advantages in processing. In this paper, a modeling study has been carried out on the flexural performance of EPC. Two classic micromechanics models, i.e. rule of mixture and Mori-Tanaka method, are introduced to predict the flexural strength of EPC with various epoxy resin contents. The comparison shows that the parallel model based on the rule of mixture attains a good agreement with the measured results when the epoxy resin content is sufficiently high to achieve strong adhesion between the aggregate and the epoxy resin. In contrast, the Mori–Tanaka method with the failure criterion dominated by the weakest phase fails to give acceptable prediction due to the unsuitability of its basic assumptions to EPC, particularly when the epoxy resin content is at relatively high levels.