Even stainless steel rusts, just more slowly. Roughly 10-100x more slowly, judging by https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1124/ML112490377.pdf and https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/10/23/8705/pdf.
I think a good analogy world be eating healthy, you'll probably live longer then soon-to-be who doesn't eat healthy but in the end both will die and seize to exist.
Material science is incredibly interesting field and I think it will play a huge role in the future. It already does.
https://knifesteelnerds.com/2019/09/23/nitro-v-its-propertie...
But they all corrode, eventually. If you want a true corrosion-resistant metal that stays (kinda) sharp, look at one of the cobalt alloys like Stellite.
cars that make many short trips, which never give the exhaust system time to fully warm up, often have extremely compromised exhaust systems, because the moisture simply can't be driven away effectively.
- dipping rebar in epoxy is sometimes done, but a single nick in the coating causes all the erosion to concentrate in that one spot, so it can be more dangerous than just uncoated rebar
- galvanised rebar works much better than epoxy, and resists corrosion at lower pH levels than normal iron, but may result in more metal loss under some conditions
- sacrificial anodes (as per the article) can and are used, but exactly how is quite complicated: if they're embedded in the concrete, the zinc breaks down into substances that can weaken it
- concrete is naturally alkaline, with cement being manufactured partly from lime, and this protects the rebar, but too high a pH causes other problems in the concrete itself, so you can't just dump alkaline substances into the mixture forever
- you can apparently use fibreglass as rebar, but I have no idea if it's any good, or what happens to fibreglass if you leave it embedded in concrete for a century
Btw were Deloreans pretty rust resistant? How will the cyber truck do living by the beach?
/Acey