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Warpy

(113,130 posts)
Sat Jan 7, 2023, 03:55 PM Jan 2023

We Finally Know How Ancient Roman Concrete Was So Durable

The ancient Romans were masters of building and engineering, perhaps most famously represented by the aqueducts. And those still functional marvels rely on a unique construction material: pozzolanic concrete, a spectacularly durable concrete that gave Roman structures their incredible strength.

Even today, one of their structures – the Pantheon, still intact and nearly 2,000 years old – holds the record for the world's largest dome of unreinforced concrete.

https://www.sciencealert.com/we-finally-know-how-ancient-roman-concrete-was-so-durable

Fascinating article on what they mixed and how they mixed it to produce unreinforced concrete that has stayed intact in things like sea walls, something we can't do even with reinforcing the concrete with rebar.

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GreenWave

(9,167 posts)
2. Next "mystery". Is glass a liquid?
Sat Jan 7, 2023, 04:14 PM
Jan 2023

If you say no, wait a few hundred years.

Next mystery why does broken old glass mixed with a new batch of molten glass make it even stronger? Hades if I know but it does!

Oh your first mystery was blood. Air pockets allow for expansion and contraction.

Warpy

(113,130 posts)
7. Concrete develops microscopic cracks
Sat Jan 7, 2023, 08:12 PM
Jan 2023

which are self healing in the Roman stuff. Water gets in to the rebar. Rust takes up more room than iron does, so the rusty rebar exerts force on the concrete and creates big cracks, and eventually the whole business fails and the bridge or the building drops like a rock.

I wonder how soon we're going to see lime clasts in structural concrete.

krispos42

(49,445 posts)
9. It's my understanding that the secret ingredient was seen as an impurity to be removed...
Sun Jan 8, 2023, 10:04 AM
Jan 2023

...and not as a component of self-healing concrete. Something along of the lines of "this lime is so contaminated with impurities! We can do much better now!"

IbogaProject

(3,648 posts)
6. I know rebar allows for huge concret structures
Sat Jan 7, 2023, 07:26 PM
Jan 2023

Rebar doesn't just corrode as iron rusts all the way through, I think the only element to do that. Copper piping gets pinprick holes after awhile, but that may be another process. Another interesting option maybe synthetic egg whites. The ancient Mexican Olmec concrete has lasted so long as they added ostridge egg white to theirs.

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