Mineral adhesives for high-performance concretes

In many industrial sectors, adhesive bonding is successfully used as a joining technique for various reasons. In aircraft and automotive construction in particular, adhesive bonding is also used for structural load-bearing purposes. In civil engineering, on the other hand, adhesive bonding is used at best as a supporting technique, e.g. to statically strengthen an existing structure with CFRP lamellas or to fix large components during the construction phase. Since normal concrete, unlike steel or other metals commonly used in automotive/aircraft construction, does not have a safely usable (surface) tensile strength, adhesive bonding technology was not considered for new buildings made of normal concrete. The new material "Ultra High Performance Concrete - UHPC" offers for the first time the possibility to bond even load-bearing components together in compression, bending tension and shear. Bonding ensures uniform force transmission and stress distribution. Stress peaks, such as those that occur during screwing, are avoided. Organic adhesives are subject to aging due to environmental conditions, tend to creep and lose strength at elevated temperatures. The softening point, and thus the limiting temperature of use, of the organic-based adhesives mainly used at present is in the range below approx. 70°C. This is why a mineral-based adhesive has to be developed. The development of a mineral-based adhesive for structural bonding within this project is therefore focused not only on the friction-locked bonding of high-quality precast concrete parts and permanent strength, but also on thermal stability below 100°C. This is a key issue in the development of a new adhesive for structural bonding. Within the framework of the Safer Materials joint project, the reduction of errors due to the application of the adhesive on the construction site is also to be promoted through process optimization.