alt Hacker NewsThere is nothing special about roman concrete compared to moderns concrete. Modern concrete is much better
The difference is that they didn't have rebar. And so they built gravity stable structures. Heavy and costly as fuck.
A modern steel and concrete structure is much lighter and much cheaper to produce.
It does mean a nodern structure doesn't last as long but also the roman stuff we see is what survived the test of time, not what crumbled.
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I think you are incorrect. Compared to modern concrete, roman concrete was more poorly cured at the time of pouring. So when it began to weather and crack, un-cured concrete would mix with water and cure. Thus it was somewhat self healing.
Modern concrete is more uniform in mix, and thus it doesn't leave uncured portions.
We have modern architecture crumbling already less than 100 years after it has been built. I know engineering is about tradeoffs but we should also acknowledge that, as a society, we are so much used to put direct economic cost as the main and sometimes only metric.
> There is nothing special about roman concrete compared to moderns concrete. Modern concrete is much better
Roman concrete is special because it is much more self-healing than modern concrete, and thus more durable.
However, that comes at the cost of being much less strong, set much slower and require rare ingredients. Roman concrete also doesn’t play nice with steel reinforcement.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_concrete