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Self-Healing Concrete: What Ancient Roman Concrete Can Teach Us
Hackaday ^ | April 3, 2023 | Maya Posch

Posted on 04/09/2023 11:30:54 AM PDT by Texas Fossil

Concrete is an incredibly useful and versatile building material on which not only today’s societies, but also the ancient Roman Empire was built. To this day Roman concrete structures can be found in mundane locations such as harbors, but also the Pantheon in Rome, which to this day forms the largest unreinforced concrete dome in existence at 43.3 meters diameter, and is in excellent condition despite being being nearly 1,900 years old.

Even as the Roman Empire fell and receded into what became the Byzantine – also known as the Eastern Roman – Empire and the world around these last remnants of Roman architecture changed and changed again, all of these concrete structures remained despite knowledge of how to construct structures like them being lost to the ages. Perhaps the most astounding thing is that even today our concrete isn’t nearly as durable, despite modern inventions such as reinforcing with rebar.

Reverse-engineering ancient Roman concrete has for decades now been the source of intense study and debate, with a recent paper by Linda M. Seymour and colleagues adding an important clue to the puzzle. Could so-called ‘hot mixing’, with pockets of reactive lime clasts inside the cured concrete provide self-healing properties?

Concrete Recipes



TOPICS: News/Current Events; Technical
KEYWORDS: ancientrome; byzantineempire; concrete; godsgravesglyphs; portland; roman; romanconcrete; romanempire; selfhealing; selfhealingconcrete
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To: alternatives?

Don’t know much history, do you?


61 posted on 04/09/2023 9:09:47 PM PDT by Romulus
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To: Vermont Lt

It’s spread out in various structures stretching from Great Britain to Israel. It’s in various stages of preservation, but enough of it is intact to make a case for the durability of their methods.

CC


62 posted on 04/09/2023 9:49:12 PM PDT by Celtic Conservative (My cats are more amusing than 200 channels worth of TV.)
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To: Romulus

All of those who profess to be Christians are not necessarily Christians. You don’t know your Bible, do you?


63 posted on 04/10/2023 6:32:01 AM PDT by alternatives?
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To: alternatives?

You’re getting way off topic because I’ve exposed your ignorance. Stop wasting my time.


64 posted on 04/10/2023 7:17:29 AM PDT by Romulus
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To: Romulus

Only in your mind.


65 posted on 04/10/2023 7:19:47 AM PDT by alternatives?
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