• @Badass_panda@lemmy.world
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    111 year ago

    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.

    • @jabjoe@feddit.uk
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      21 year ago

      Very true. But still, seams like we have been doing it long enough we should know what lasts.

      • tal
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        21 year ago

        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.

    • Roboticide
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      1 year ago

      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.

        • Roboticide
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          11 year ago

          No, they also used a lot of wood.

          But doesn’t change the fact the concrete is good concrete. Better much of ours.

      • @Caestus@lemmy.world
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        31 year ago

        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.