An application of epoxy and polyurethane on various marbles to enhance cuttability

Natural stones may have a number of discontinuities such as fractures, cracks, fissures, and fillings. While cutting them in situ and in production plants, in order to have large dimensional blocks and thin plates respectively, some breaks and undesirable defects may be experienced due to those of aforementioned structural properties. Thus, block and plate recovery considerably may reduce even may be lost out on cutting. In this study, it is targeted how much change in the mechanical behavior in marbles can be provided by application of a thin film of the chemicals such as epoxy and polyurethane on to them. In the scope of the study, five types of marbles are selected from the different production areas of Turkey. All marbles have different property and unique features. Two types of chemicals are used for providing a confining pressure to enhance their bearing capacity; one of them is "the epoxy",well-known and widely used in natural stone industry and the other one is "a kind of polyurethane" that a commercial company has been working on it. After cylindrical sample preparation according to marble standards in use (EN 1926), circular surfaces of marble samples were covered by aforesaid chemicals. Uniaxial compressive strength, point load index and Brazilian tensile strength tests were performed on them. Besides; same experiments were carried out on plain marble samples to see variations with the other group. In conclusion, all results are listed and compared with each other to have a starting point for further studies. It can be here said that, samples that confined by a cover of polyurethane illustrate more improvements in the strength abilities than plain marble group.