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England’s concrete crisis could extend to hospitals and courts, experts say
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2023
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How the hell have we messed up concrete? The Romans had concrete that is still with us today.
To be fair, the Romans also had a lot of concrete that is not with us today, there's a bit of survivorship bias going on here.
Sure, but Roman concrete was also actually really good due to the ingredients used. They had self-healing concrete millennia before we came up with the idea.
A fair critique is the Romans built their shit to last and didn't have advanced computers to calculate loads to just ~10% of failure, like we do now. We'll use cheaper, local materials if it's good enough and make sure the building stands for maybe a century. The Romans shipped ash and concrete ingredients halfway across Europe to make sure they were using the good stuff.
One thing to note regarding the self-healing concrete. They came across that formula by complete accident. All they knew was adding volcanic ash resulted in longer lasting concrete but wouldn't have known about the lime clasts that would mix with water and refill cracks.