Concrete is a composite building material made of coarse and fine aggregate, typically sand and gravel, bound together with a paste of cement and water that hardens over time. Roman engineers developed a highly durable concrete using volcanic ash that let them build structures such as the Pantheon dome and harbor works that survive two thousand years later. The material fell out of common use in Europe after the fall of Rome, was reintroduced with the invention of Portland cement in 1824 by Joseph Aspdin, and was further transformed by reinforced concrete, which embeds steel bars in the concrete to add tensile strength, in the second half of the nineteenth century.
Facts
Disputed
Origin YearRoman concrete, opus caementicium, was in wide structural use from around the third century BCE; still older Nabataean hydraulic-cement-like materials are attested from roughly 6500 BCE, and the modern Portland cement that underlies most concrete poured today dates only to 1824. Primary UseFoundations, structural framing, roads, dams and nearly every large scale civil engineering work. 1 Classification
Material Class Connections
Associated With
Cement, Materials Cement is the binding agent that, mixed with water and aggregate, hardens into concrete.
Khan first proved the tubular structural system in reinforced concrete, on Chicago DeWitt-Chestnut Apartments in 1963, before developing its steel form.
Source A History of TechnologyCharles Singer, E. J. Holmyard, A. R. Hall and Trevor I. Williams, editors
Grand Coulee Dam is a concrete gravity dam on the Columbia River.
Hoover Dam is a concrete arch-gravity dam on the Colorado River.
Reinforced concrete forms reactor containment structures
Portland cement is the standard binder used to make modern concrete.
Source Joseph Aspdin Patent No. 5022, 1824 (cementkilns.co.uk)
Source Prestressed concrete (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors
Prestressing pre-compresses concrete with tensioned steel so it resists tension in service.
Embedding steel reinforcement in concrete gives it the tensile strength concrete lacks alone.
Roman concrete is the ancient volcanic-ash-based concrete used in structures such as the Pantheon.
Slipforming, Methods Slipforming casts concrete continuously in a moving form for tall or long structures.
Steel, Materials Steel reinforcing bar embedded in concrete gives reinforced concrete tensile strength that plain concrete lacks.
In Field
Source A History of TechnologyCharles Singer, E. J. Holmyard, A. R. Hall and Trevor I. Williams, editors
In the Other Atlases
Same As
Also in Architecture and Design Atlas: the same subject.
Sources
1. A History of Technology
Charles Singer, E. J. Holmyard, A. R. Hall and Trevor I. Williams, editors, Oxford University Press, 1954material-class sentence
Concrete is a composite building material made of coarse and fine aggregate, typically sand and gravel, bound together with a paste of cement and water that hardens over time.
- In Field: Civil Engineering
- Associated With: Fazlur Rahman Khan
View the Source Concrete (Wikipedia)
Wikipedia contributors, Wikimedia FoundationIntroductionQuote, Introduction
the second-most-used substance (after water), the most widely used building material, and the most-manufactured material in the world.
Concrete (Wikipedia)
WikipediaWikipedia: Concrete, lead section, first paragraphQuote, Wikipedia: Concrete, lead section, first paragraph
Concrete is a composite material composed of aggregate bound together with a fluid cement that cures to a solid.
Joseph Aspdin Patent No. 5022, 1824 (cementkilns.co.uk)
Prestressed concrete (Wikipedia)
Wikipedia contributors, Wikimedia FoundationAssociated With: Prestressed Concrete, IntroductionQuote, Associated With: Prestressed Concrete, Introduction
Prestressed concrete is a form of concrete used in construction.
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