Was Roman Concrete Better?

What people said

adwn · 2022-10 · Recommendation

Concrete without rebar lacks tensile strength, and Roman concrete is no different. When using materials with insufficient tensile strength, you're severely restricted in the kinds of structures you can build. That's why Roman buildings used so many domes and arches, and why they were massive . Practical Engineering has a good video about it: [VIDEO]

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wnevets · 2022-10 · Recommendation

> Same goes for roman concrete. We know far more about concrete than the Romans did. We just don't bother to engineer everything to last forever, because that costs money and has little point to it a lot of the time. Yes, some buildings are works of art, but many things just have a function to fulfill, which is often temporary. Nobody is sad that the millions of mass-made soviet residential crappy buildings aren't still as good as new. If they were made to a better standard they'd still be ugly cookie cutter things. Practical Engineering has a good video on Roman concrete [VIDEO]

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kibwen · 2022-01 · Recommendation

Here's a good video on the use and tradeoffs of Roman concrete engineering: [VIDEO] TL;DW: whereas modern construction uses rebar as a way to keep concrete from fracturing under tensile stress, the Romans made their constructions enormous so that the weight of the structure itself would compress the material and keep it from failing from tensile stress. Their monuments weren't built huge just because it cool, but also because it was practical. But large concrete constructions are both expensive and take years and years to cure, and depending on your concrete chemistry the strongest mixtures can also be much more difficult to work with.

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