Reinforced concrete

Assembled from 28 blocks · 1 evidence · 26 related

1. Story
2. Concrete with steel bars embedded where the member goes into tension - the underside of a beam at midspan, the top over a support, the base of a wall. The composite works because the two materials have almost the same coefficient of thermal expansion, so they do not tear apart with temperature, and because the alkaline concrete passivates the steel and protects it from corrosion as long as the cover is sound and uncracked. Joseph Monier, a French gardener, patented iron-reinforced cement tubs and tanks from 1867; the decisive step to a complete structural system - monolithic beams, columns and slabs cast together, with bent-up bars following the tension line - is associated with Francois Hennebique, whose system was patented and licensed widely from the 1890s. Reinforced concrete gives a designer a material that can be moulded into any shape and can take tension, which is why the 20th century can build shells, cantilevers and flat slabs that no masonry tradition could attempt. Its durability failure mode is specific: chloride or carbonation reaches the bar, the bar rusts, rust expands, and the concrete spalls off.
3. Knowledge
4. Roman concrete (opus caementicium)
5. Structural steel
6. Reinforced concrete
7. Connections
8. Roman concrete (opus caementicium)
9. Structural steel
10. Burj Khalifa
11. Monier patents iron-reinforced cement
12. The Hennebique system makes reinforced concrete a frame
13. Burj Khalifa opens at 828 m
14. Colosseum (Flavian Amphitheatre), Rome
15. Reinforced concrete
16. The Pantheon, Rome
17. The Pantheon, Rome
18. Roman builders adopt pozzolanic concrete
19. The Colosseum opens: arch and concrete at civic scale
20. The Pantheon dome spans about 43 m in unreinforced concrete
21. Lime clasts reinterpreted as hot mixing and self-healing
22. The steel skeleton frame
23. Reinforced concrete
24. Bessemer describes the converter to the British Association
25. The Hennebique system makes reinforced concrete a frame
26. Burj Khalifa opens at 828 m
27. Evidence
28. History of reinforced concrete as material and as architectural idea, covering Monier's patents from 1867 and the Hennebique framing system licensed from the 1890s. V55 verification basis: real and standard, not consulted in this session; the specific patent dates should be checked against a patent record before publication.