The joke going around here is the cops were told to ignore cars veering around on the road. The drunks are driving the cars going straight, oblivious to the strip mines they are running over.
I can hear the union halls crying already...
That is cool. Ductile concrete!
Up in a Northern Twin Cities suburb there’s a street they rebuilt, must be 20 years ago now. I was just noticing the other day it is still pristine.
I don’t know what kind of concrete they used on that but I wish they’d use it everywhere.
Wonder if any scientific entity has ever done an in-depth analysis of the concrete used to build the Pantheon in Rome...I hear it has held up for a pretty good stretch of time.
“Superhydrophobic”? Please don’t give the liberals another term they can use to bash us people who don’t like getting wet over the head with.
Key issue: failure mode
Small fiber reinforcing has been done before, and is attractive because you can add it to the mix, and don’t need to place it beforehand.
The problem is that when small-fiber-crete fails, it tends to fail suddenly and catastrophically. Monolithic Domes(TM), for example, are no longer shotcreted that way for that reason. Rebar provides warning, and (usually) more gradual failure.
Indeed, I see no reason why this new formulation can’t be used with traditional, coated or stainless rebar for a lifetime of Roman proportions.
Better road-building methods are out there. Roads with planned obsolescence offer politicians more frequent opportunities to accept bribes, so short term surfacing like blacktop is the norm.
Who can live on bribes only offered every hundred years?
This could be a great thing. I don’t even think this will kill the companies the do roads, because if we aren’t spending money rebuilding the roads we already have, we will spend it making more roads or widening the current roads.
There is no end of the need for roads, only a limit to how much money we can spend on them.
bookmark
If the concrete doesn’t absorb ANY water though, it will leave a thin sheen of water on the surface of the roads, leading to extensive hydroplaning.
They will have to come up with a surface treatment that can solve that problem, I’m guessing.
But the bad news is that this concrete will likely increase global warming.
What happens when someone discovers that the “tiny super strong fibers” cause lung cancer when they get into the atmosphere?
This from Milwaukee.
Ironically, I spent a few months in Milwaukee in 2011, and they’ve got a lot of cement streets.
Some of them, though, are nearly impassable. Not because the concrete has failed, but because the roadbed was improperly prepared, and the vertical alignment on all the slabs is now gone.
There was one street in particular I once drove on, and never again because it literally made me seasick.
From the replies at the link:
This is a great thing, although I believe Wisconsin did a test back in the sixties, they poured a stretch of I-94 for about 20 miles, same concrete, steel & thickness as the rest of the freeways ,but with a different expansion joint cut into the roadway.
They cut diagonal expansion joints, about 45 deg. angels instead of 90 deg. angles as is used on other roadways. By doing this the load was carried more evenly across the roadway. this roadway stayed smooth & crack-less for 20 yrs. ! Not one pothole !The 20 year test was a total success !
After 20 years,the state tore this roadway up & replaced it with a conventional roadway, with the expansion joints cut at 90 deg. angels, and with-in a year, the new highway was full of pot-holes & cracks!
I see the jobs of construction workers that they say would be lost ,but if you think about how long it would take to replace the roadways across all of North America, I can see generations of workers at work ! Plus after generations they would adapt towards other occupations as well !!
Mary Poppins sure can carry a tune.
In a sterilized form, and with its ability to bend, it might have an application medically in the repair of degenerated spinal discs.
After looking at the linked article and the videos, this stuff reminds me of FLUBBER!!
It bends! It repels water! LOL