From the course: Construction Management: Concrete Construction

The most widely used man-made material

From the course: Construction Management: Concrete Construction

Start my 1-month free trial

The most widely used man-made material

“

- Alright. I said we use a lot of concrete in the construction industry but you might be surprised to learn that concrete is actually the most widely used building material in the world. In fact, it's actually the most widely used, manmade material on the planet. Think about it, it's use on virtually every job. In horizontal construction, we use concrete to build roads and curbs and driveways and sidewalks. We make large pipes out of concrete along with the underground vaults that they connect to. We use it for erosion control and to line channels and waterways. And then in vertical construction. We use it to make concrete structures like offices, hotels, parking structures. Sometimes concrete's used as a building structural frame or its main structural component. But even in steel buildings, where structural steel makes up the building's frame, we're still typically gonna use concrete to make up each floor. Even a basic wood framed house, with wood floors, will probably use concrete as the footings that hold the structure up. With all this concrete being used on all these different types of construction projects, it's important to understand how the material works. You need to understand its strengths as well as its limitations. You need to understand why we add steel reinforcement to concrete and what advantages there are to doing things like pre-stressing concrete. And in today's modern concrete industry, you need to have a basic understanding of the chemistry behind concrete. And how chemicals are being used to alter its properties and make what's referred to as, high performance concrete, that's changing the way we build some types of structures. To understand these properties and to begin to understand some of this chemistry, let's continue on and take a look at a little concrete history, back in the days when the chemistry was just starting to be explored.

Contents