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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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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.
Very true. But still, seams like we have been doing it long enough we should know what lasts.
We have definitely built concrete structures that have lasted a lot longer than 30 years. This was a very particular form of concrete construction that was apparently only a few decades old when the issues were discovered.
I mean, building one form of concrete structure doesn't give us a complete understanding of every possible new variant invented and their tradeoffs.
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.
Do you think they built everything that way? Cause they certainly didn't. Hence the bias.
No, they also used a lot of wood.
But doesn't change the fact the concrete is good concrete. Better much of ours.
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.