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1. ajcp+(OP)[view] [source] 2021-05-25 22:30:41
Yes.
replies(1): >>matheu+o
2. matheu+o[view] [source] 2021-05-25 22:33:45
>>ajcp+(OP)
Please elaborate. Which materials and methods?
replies(2): >>0xbadc+m3 >>jfoutz+l5
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3. 0xbadc+m3[view] [source] [discussion] 2021-05-25 22:50:08
>>matheu+o
There is no way to know other than to ask the architect. You can make educated guesses but that still won't tell you. Even then it's up to the contractors to have done everything properly.

Or if it's made of stone. Stacking giant stones on top of each other is a sure-fire way to make a building outlive you.

After that, the longest-lived buildings that I am aware of are made of wood. The catch is they've been rebuilt 50 times, once per time they burned to the ground.

After those, the longest-lived buildings are made of Roman concrete that we can't reproduce. (To give you an idea how insane Roman concrete was, you can go kayaking north of Naples, and kayak through a concrete Roman building that is sitting on piles in the Mediterranean sea)

replies(2): >>rootus+9c >>tomc19+bo
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4. jfoutz+l5[view] [source] [discussion] 2021-05-25 23:04:59
>>matheu+o
I'm going way out on a limb here, and claim both. There is an interplay between the two. Wood, for example in a dark and dry place, can last for a very long time, but I doubt there are many wooden structures that are, say 2000 years old. Perhaps some supports for tunnels in dry climates. Those organic compounds will break down over time. The method of using the wood, how it's protected from its environment is important. Stone is another obvious example. Plenty of stone buildings have been built and crumbled, but the really well cut, fit, and stacked stones seem to last a long time. There are countless temples and castles that are simple stone with very tight tolerances (methods) that last a long time. The pyramids are a spectacular example. Hoover Dam is reinforced concrete, and is expected to last a long time. I suspect the steel will rust away, but the compression from the water will keep the concrete stable. (not a civil engineer, but I'd bet this was seriously thought about by civil engineers when it was built)

The materials are important, but they can be misused, and master craftsmen can use them far better than I ever will, So the methods matter as well.

_edit_

I looked it up, hoover dam used steel pipes, not solid bars, so there's room for the corrosion to expand into the void created by the pipes.

Master craftsmen I tell ya, they think hard about that kind of stuff.

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5. rootus+9c[view] [source] [discussion] 2021-05-25 23:48:15
>>0xbadc+m3
> Roman concrete that we can't reproduce.

That claim seems to date to a particular article written in 2017 that wasn't well sourced. Roman concrete is interesting stuff and has useful properties, but humans have since created concrete mixtures that are far superior. But they're expensive, so it's not too surprising we don't see them getting used in buildings that compare less than favorably to a temple built a couple thousand years ago. Survivorship bias taken to the extreme.

replies(1): >>geoffm+9k
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6. geoffm+9k[view] [source] [discussion] 2021-05-26 00:56:26
>>rootus+9c
I asked my dad about this a while back - he spent his entire career in civil engineering and he said almost exactly what you just did. Basically; modern concrete is far better, but often not built that way.
replies(1): >>0xbadc+Gs
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7. tomc19+bo[view] [source] [discussion] 2021-05-26 01:31:03
>>0xbadc+m3
Didn't they figure out that Roman concrete was made or infused with ash from a volcano or something?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_concrete

replies(1): >>jaclaz+Xt1
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8. 0xbadc+Gs[view] [source] [discussion] 2021-05-26 02:10:56
>>geoffm+9k
I haven't seen that theory tested. I can't find any tests or studies anywhere of replicated Roman concrete. And no tests of genuine Roman concrete, either. We don't know how it actually performs. So to make a comparison to modern concrete is specious.

Modern concretes can do a whole lot of stuff Roman concrete can't, because there are so many formulations of it. But if you want to stick a building literally in the ocean and have it never ever disappear, nobody has shown that we can actually do it today.

There's a whole lot of theory and talk by experts, about how we don't need to make it, but if we wanted to, boy would it be easy, but don't worry, modern concrete is just so amazing, you should just use that, for modern use cases, and oh by the way, it would be too expensive to make, even though we haven't actually made it or tried to bring the price down.

There's a world of practical experience needed to claim for a fact that modern concrete is legitimately better, much less that we can actually make it and that it would hold up as we expect. I'm still waiting for concrete evidence.

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9. jaclaz+Xt1[view] [source] [discussion] 2021-05-26 11:50:43
>>tomc19+bo
Yes, but it is not that we don't use (or at least it is possible to use) ashes in "modern" concrete, typically we use ashes that are a by-product of (carbon based, yes I know) electrical generation plants.

The bigger difference in components is the kind of cement the Romans (and we "moderns" until a few years ago) used, i.e. pozzolanic cement, nowadays everything is "portland" cement.

BUT the definite difference is the kind of structures, Romans did not use "reinforced" concrete, only various types of "plain, non-reinforced" concrete, and all their structures are based on the main characteristic of concrete, which is its resistance to compression.

The idea of reinforced concrete is all about adding to a material with excellent compression resistance (but no resistance on tension/traction) a material (steel) with excellent resistance to tension/traction and relatively poor (in the quantities used in reinforced concrete) resistance to compression, obtainining a composite material that excels in both.

About ashes, overall it is more about their size that about their nature, concrete is a composite and if you have all possible sizes of aggregates (ashes are very, very small sized particles) in the "right" amount you essentially fit "better" the space, i.e. you have a higher density of the resulting composite, and, particularly when compression resistance is the goal, the higher the density the better the resistance.

Imagine (say) that you have to fill a 100x100x100 mm box with 10 mm balls, you can fit in them a certain amount of these balls (roughly 10x10x10=1000), but you are leaving lots of "air" between them, a single 10 mm ball is 2/3x3.1416x5^3=262 mm3, so the 1000 balls total 262,000, but the volume of the box is 100x100x100= 1,000,000, now if you have some 2 mm balls you can add them in the same volume, and then if you have some 0.5 mm balls you can put some of them in that same box as well, etc.

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