Abstract

In industrial areas like manufacturing units, logistics centers, and warehouses, floors are exposed to heavy traffic, high mechanical loads, and possible chemical contact. This promotes cementitious flooring compositions such as epoxy resin-based flooring compositions and polyurethane (PU) cementitious systems. The latter showed outstanding mechanical properties and did not suffer from the drawbacks of epoxy resin-based compositions. PU system is composed of two different binding systems: polyurethane binders and hydraulic binders. This resulted in a very complex system wherein some reactions coincide during the curing of the two binders. However, some undesirable cross-interactions between the two systems (such as isocyanate compound reaction water) may jeopardize superior performance. Hence, the current thesis focuses on characterizing PU flooring products' main composition fully. This included the evaluation of fresh and hardened properties under laboratory and simulated field-like conditions (Hot and cold). Based on the preliminary results, potential improvements to overcome drawbacks and defects were proposed. In addition, the potential modification for the mixtures by increasing the sand content, to make it more economical while maintaining adequate performance was examined and validated.