What Have The Romans Ever Done For Us?

[Minimalist]

Well.... extraordinary concrete.

http://www.rawstory.com/2016/06/the-prob...-concrete/

The problem with reinforced concrete

By itself, concrete is a very durable construction material. The magnificent Pantheon in Rome, the world’s largest unreinforced concrete dome, is in excellent condition after nearly 1,900 years. And yet many concrete structures from last century – bridges, highways and buildings – are crumbling. Many concrete structures built this century will be obsolete before its end.

Given the survival of ancient structures, this may seem curious. The critical difference is the modern use of steel reinforcement, known as rebar, concealed within the concrete. Steel is made mainly of iron, and one of iron’s unalterable properties is that it rusts. This ruins the durability of concrete structures in ways that are difficult to detect and costly to repair.

[Whateverist]

You'd think they'd either coat/treat the rebar to prevent the rust, or use a different reinforcing material. I wonder why they don't?

[Minimalist]

Money?

[Chad32]

They really don't make them like they used to. They don't want to make something that's going to last 5000 years, because they won't make much money on repair costs.

[Anomalocaris]

Making costly buildings that last a very long time is not always a good thing from the perspective of best use of available resources for the benefit of the society. The Romans definitely had an edifice complex. We may want to be more utility oriented.

[Minimalist]

I think we are just cheap and don't plan ahead.

[Mr.wizard]

Well you cant expect them to compete with all the Alien technology they had back then.

[Chad32]

It probably helps that some thing can be mass produced, and built quickly. It doesn't take as much time or effort, so we don't appreciate that aspect as much.

[Jackalope]

I think it's a bit silly to compare the durability of something the the Parthenon to a modern structure - bridges and highways in particular. If the Parthenon carried daily freeway traffic for many years, it likely would not be standing.

Describing the Parthenon as being in "excellent condition" is equally silly.



Yes, it's in pretty decent shape for being 1900 years old, but describing it as "excellent condition" is ludicrous. That's a structure I would describe as "crumbling".

Let's also not forget that many-storied buildings are subject to stresses not found in ancient Greek and Roman construction.

Rusting rebar probably has something to do with it, but they're really comparing apples to oranges here.

[vorlon13]

By not using rebar, the Romans were limited to using their concrete for applications in which it was always under compression, not tension.

Makes a helluva a difference.

Even with rebar in it, I note the offset supports under the West Dodge Expressway in Omaha around the 114th street intersection are already showing tension cracks* and the structure is only ~ 10 years old now.


*not a structural concern, but it does highlight the enormous load on those offset columns, the dead weight of the structure on the backside of those columns does not exceed (by quite a bit) the tension load the column is bearing.