Advanced Materials Research
ISSN: 1662-8985, Vols. 712-715, pp 955-960
doi:10.4028/www.scientific.net/AMR.712-715.955
© 2013 Trans Tech Publications, Switzerland
Online: 2013-06-27
The Birth and Use of Concrete and Reinforced Concrete
Fei Wang1,a
1
College of Hydraulic & Environmental Engineering, China Three Gorges Univ., Yichang 443002,
China
a
[email protected]
Keywords: Concrete, Concrete Technology, Development, Reinforced Concrete.
Abstract. Concrete was used for construction in many ancient structures. Concrete technology was
known by the Ancient Romans and was widely used within the Roman Empire. After the Empire
passed, use of concrete became scarce until the technology was re-pioneered in the mid-18th century.
The widespread use of concrete in many Roman structures has ensured that many survive to the
present day. The development of reinforced concrete marked the dawn of a new age. For it was the
first heterogeneous building material, using steel, cement, sand, gravel, and water. This composition
possessed much better properties than each of its individual components.
Introduction
Many pioneering engineering and scientific discoveries have accumulated in the use of cement and
concrete in modern construction work. Several of these discoveries were formed in ancient times and
remain valid even to this day. The use of limestone in ancient times began as purely accidental and
evolved into its specific preparation with other materials to form a new material – lime mortar. Soon
following was recognition that certain combinations of materials possessed hydraulic properties. This
enabled the development of opus caementitium, or Roman concrete, and its use in construction
projects. Because of its strength and durability, we are still able to witness the architectural
achievements of that period which made use of this material.
Their art of using concrete was just one of the many things that were lost upon the break-up of the
Roman Empire. The Middle Ages saw a reversion to the use of non-hydraulic limes, which were slow
in setting and less durable. It wasn’t until the middle of the eighteenth century, with investigations
into hydraulic lime and the production of cement, that concrete was rediscovered. One hundred years
later, based on the concept of pise construction, the tamped concrete technique evolved. This was
followed by many diverse experiments utilizing iron inserts for the improvement of concrete’s tensile
strength. This evolved into the perfecting of reinforcing concrete via iron rods. Development of
fundamental methods of structural analysis, particularly theories of iron-reinforced concrete, also
evolved and eventually paved the way for our modern reinforced concrete technology employing
steel.
Extremely long spans have been achieved, while at the same time saving weight, through the
further developments in the field of prestressed concrete. High-strength concretes for special
applications have been produced for a number of years in civil and structural engineering projects,
while experiments with glass fibre reinforcement and self-compacting concrete have been advancing
just as quickly. On top of all of this, newer methods for finishing concrete surfaces are further
promoting a more distinctive use of concrete in architecture.
Lime Mortar in Antiquity
Whether the earliest applications of lime mortar known from ancient times were deliberate or merely
chance results from the use of local materials is no longer possible to determine. It can be said,
though, that the observation of chance reactions had played an important role in the development of
mortar. The use of lime mortar for important religious structures has been proved in ancient Egypt,
Troy, and Pergamum. This method of construction is even mentioned in the Old Testament (Hebrew
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Bible). The Phoenicians discovered that a waterproof mortar was produced when volcanic rock was
ground and mixed with lime, sand, and water. With this discovery they had a new material that could
be used for building their irrigation systems and many other things. Their knowledge of this material
soon spread around the whole of the Mediterranean. This waterproof plaster was used in the cisterns
of Jerusalem and is still intact today. The Greeks also knew of fired lime. They had been using it,
mixed with crushed marble to form a lime plaster, since the seventh century BC. It has been found that
the final structures of Nebuchadnezzar in Kasr and Babylon, built around 600 BC, also utilized lime
mortar. The same has been proven of the Great Wall of China built around 300 BC. Even the subsoil
below the Great Wall was improved in its load-bearing capacity by consolidation with lime.
Roman Construction
A new method of wall construction occurred in lower Italy during the third century BC. Two leaves of
jointed ashlar stone were constructed in which lime mortar and rubble stone was poured and
compacted in the void between. The two masonry leaves were linked and stabilized by anchor stones
until the tamped material had hardened.
By the second century BC, the Romans had begun to quarry a pink sand-like material from
Pozzuoli, Italy to add to the mixture. This fine pink substance was initially mistaken for sand. It turned
out to be volcanic ash containing silica and alumina, which combine chemically with lime to produce
what became known as pozzolanic cement. It was at this point that the Romans took up the idea of
Greek cast-in-situ masonry. The coarse aggregate used for this work was either broken brick or quarry
debris. This was mixed with lime and sand, or pozzolana. Vitruvius describes for the first time the
production of hydraulic mortar and concrete in his work Ten Books of Architecture [1], comprised of
hydraulic mortar and stone chippings. Concretus, the Roman word for this mixing of elements, means
“grown together” or “compounded”, and explains the material’s current name.
Their first large-scale uses of the material were usually as an infill material and for foundations.
These structures with an “as struck” finish were found almost exclusively in utility buildings such as
cisterns and thermal baths. As for use in foundations, some of their most notable works include port
structures like the breakwater at Naples, in which the impressions left by the formwork boards can
still be seen, and the Roman Colosseum is almost twelve-meter deep foundation.
Concretes being produced by the Romans were eventually utilized above ground level in various
forms and purposes. They thought of concrete primarily as a structural material that required facing
when it was used in positions where it would be seen. As a result, although concrete used by the
Romans was universal throughout their empire, the facing material was often subject to regional
variation. The oldest method of facing a concrete wall was called Opus Incertum. In this method, large
irregularly-shaped pieces of stone were cast into the surface of concrete, leaving quite large gaps
between the stones. Later, the Romans developed a facing technique called Opus Reticulatum. Small
squared stones were placed on the outer surface of the concrete wall in a diagonal pattern to form a
continuous surface treatment, resembling the mesh of a net, from which its name was derived. The
Romans also used brick facing. These bricks were triangular in plan and built up as the outer faces of
the wall, with the points of their triangles towards the center of the wall. Concrete was then poured
between two walls of these bricks. A mixed facing, including brick and stone bands, was also used.
This was called Opus Mixtum. Facing materials employed by the Romans to beautify their mass
concrete included alabaster, porphyry, marble of all kinds, jasper, mosaics, and stuccos.
The discovery of concrete allowed the Romans to develop the vault and dome. Through the use of
mass-concrete semicircular vaults, much larger spaces could be spanned than had been possible
before. All previous building civilizations had experienced this great difficulty: how to cover large
open building areas. The Romans had discovered a viable method. With semi-circular vaults cast in
one mass, they produced an enclosing structure that made considerably less lateral thrust on the
adjoining walls. In effect, the vault was a monolithic curved lid. Usually these vaults were lined on
their inner surface with brick or some other finish material.
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In 27 BC Agrippa started building what is probably the most amazing example of these domes and
the most spectacular structure in ancient Rome – the Pantheon [2]. The cylindrical wall, enclosing an
interior space of 142 feet in diameter, is covered by a self-supporting monolithic dome constructed of
concrete. It has been found that the walls and waffle-type dome employ concretes of different
densities so that the weight decreases considerably towards the thirty-foot diameter roof light at the
dome’s apex. This structure is a testament to the durability of concrete and the skill of Roman
engineers.
It was not until 1570 that a span of this size was realized again. In Mimar Sinan’s Selimiye Mosque
[3] in Edirne the vaulting caps were built on clay masonry acting as permanent formwork.
The Production of Cement and Concrete in the 18th and 19th Centuries
In modern Europe concrete once again found its way as a building material through a humble origin:
pise. Pise was the use of mud as a building material. The idea of using mud for architecture, which
was crude and impermanent, would not be recognized as “true” architecture before 1750. In the
development of concrete construction, pise was important not so much in the material used, but in the
technique employed. Earth was rammed and packed between two timber formwork walls that could
be slid vertically along timber posts to continue the wall construction upwards. The interest in pise
construction was not only in the economy of using earth as the building material, but also in the
process of constructing a building through molding. It was inevitable that at some point certain
individuals would appreciate the possibilities of this revolutionary construction process and improve
it by advancing the material being used.
An ambitious building laborer named Francois Cointeraux [4] (1740-1826), was one of the first of
these pioneers. He was primarily a stonemason, but he had considerable experience with pise
construction. Although Cointeraux did not anticipate the wider applications of this ‘molding’
construction method, he is credited for having been the first to bring its possibilities before the public
eye. He accomplished this through several years of experiments, spanning from 1784 to 1789, using
pise construction with both packed earth and lime mortar to fireproof buildings from farmhouses to
churches. Most of his work was devoted to smallscale experiments on an open piece of land in the
Champs-Elysees; when the French Revolution broke out, it confined Cointeraux’s efforts to writing
pamphlets about the possibilities of molded construction.
In 1755 John Smeaton [5], an engineer from Leeds, England began experimenting with the
development of a cement superior to the lime mortar that had been used up until that time. From these
experiments Smeaton established the principles of hydraulicity. He found that a certain clay content in
cement was responsible for the setting properties under water and that it would later prove waterproof
once set. He was appointed to rebuild the recently destroyed Eddystone lighthouse near Plymouth, off
the Devon coast in the English Channel. He claimed that his mortar, in terms of strength and
durability, would produce a cement equal to the best Portland stone. The ingredients of his mix were
equal parts of the local Aberthaw lime and pozzolana from Civitavecchia in Italy.
Another major founding achievement in the history of modern concrete was in 1824 when Joseph
Aspdin [6] (1779-1855), a master bricklayer from England, took out a patent for the manufacture of
what was essentially modern concrete, using Portland cement. It was called this because, when set, it
was thought to resemble in color the limestone from the English Isle of Portland. As a hydraulic
mixture of limestone and clay that would cure under water, his cement was the most superior type of
the day. Portland cement improved over time with new versions frequently being established to
gradually replace the use of Roman cement. But despite the rapid improvements of this material, it
was not usually mixed with aggregates to make concrete for structural use until the mid-1800s. Even
then concrete was being precast mainly for small elements such as paving, garden ornaments, and
balustrading, and it would remain that way until the development of steel reinforcement turned
concrete into on of the most important modern construction materials. In 1844 Englishman Isaac
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Charles Johnson introduced firing up to sintering into the production of cement. Prior to this
underfiring was the method carried out. This advancement brought about considerable improvements
to the material’s properties.
First Trials with Reinforced Concrete
The existence of reinforced concrete has been documented from as early as the 1840s, and throughout
the nineteenth century it was known by many names, including ferro-concrete [7]. Disagreement
exists among researchers as to the first real use of reinforcing in concrete. More often than not, the
construction of several small rowboats by Joseph-Louis Lambot [8] (1814-1887) in the late 1840s and
early 1850s is cited as the first successful example. In 1848 Lambot, a lawyer in southern France, built
his first rowing boat of concrete (cement mortar) reinforced by a network of iron rods and metal mesh.
He had some plans for using this material in building construction because he applied for a patent in
France and Belgium in 1856, describing concrete as “an improved building material to be used as a
substitute for wood in naval and architectural constructions and also for domestic purposes where
dampness is to be avoided.” Lambot called his material in the 1855 patent “Ferciment”.
In England there was one interesting and somewhat significant experiment in reinforced concrete
in the 1850s that is properly credited as the first reinforced concrete building. This was undertaken by
a Newcastle-based builder named William Boutland Wilkinson (1819-1902), who took out a patent in
1854 on a process of embedding second-hand wire colliery rope in fresh concrete. The rope was
engaged with the concrete by a loop or splayed end so that it could not be drawn out when the concrete
was under load. This experiment seems to be the first attempt at producing concrete as a composite
structure. In many ways Wilkinson anticipated Monier and Coignet. However, his buildings created
little influence, as they were small and restricted to the Newcastle-upon-Tyne [9] area.
Joseph Monier (1823-1906), a French engineer, began his experiments by building reinforced
concrete (cement mortar) tubs for use as large plant pots. He followed this with garden furniture and
pipes through the same reinforcing method of iron rod and metal mesh, and patented his process for
reinforcing plain concrete in 1867. Monier’s most advanced constructions were his beams and
columns composed of cement and iron, for use on roads and railways (patent 1877). It was
subsequently shown that Monier never understood, as Wilkinson had, the need for the reinforcing to
be near the tensile side of a beam.
Meanwhile fellow engineer Francois Coignet had built several large houses of concrete in England
and France in the period between 1850-1880. At first they were constructed of plain concrete and later
of reinforced concrete. He used iron rods in the floors to keep the walls from spreading, but later used
the rods as flexural elements. He had earlier used concrete in 1852 for the construction of a chemical
factory near Paris. The walls, vaulting, stairs, and lintels were entirely of concrete. He did not dress
any of it with brick or stone, which was common practice in that area. Coignet took out a patent on his
methods in 1855 and was specific in stating that concrete walls do not need facing materials such as
stone, brick, or any other material. By 1867 Coignet was thoroughly testing the architectural
possibilities of his new material in a six-story apartment block design at the corner of the rue
Miromesnil and rue de Naples. With the careful detailing of its facades, it is difficult to believe that it
is built of ‘compacted concrete’ throughout until one finds that the masonry ‘joints’ are painted on the
surface of the wall. He referred to the material as beton arme, thereby christening the material in
French for all time.
On the other side of the Atlantic between 1871 and 1872, William E. Ward, a mechanical engineer,
was working on a reinforcement method using iron bars. His method showed many more signs of a
true understanding of the principles of reinforced concrete than those of Monier and Coignet. He
arrived at his concrete reinforcing idea when he was on a trip to England in 1867. He observed several
construction workers struggling to remove hardened cement from their spades, which caused Ward to
see that if cement adhered to iron tools so firmly, then it should do the same to iron joists embedded
within concrete floors. He constructed one of the first buildings of reinforced concrete on American
soil between 1871 and 1875. It was a residence that remains standing today in Port Chester, New
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York. He desired a concrete house because his wife was terribly afraid of fire and commissioned
architect Robert Mook to prepare the design in 1870. Like Coignet's buildings, it was made to
resemble masonry to be socially acceptable. Mr. Ward handled all technical and construction issues
himself, conducting long-term load tests and other experiments. In 1883 he delivered a paper on the
house to the American Society of Mechanical Engineers entitled "Beton in Combination with Iron As
a Building Material." His audience was far more interested in the unique water supply and heating
systems which he had designed than in reinforced concrete. Nonetheless, the tremendous significance
of his entirely new scientific approach and its influence on modern development can be seen.
There was parallel development of reinforced concrete frame construction by G. A. Wayss
(Germany and Austria), Ernest L. Ransome (United States), and Francois Hennebique (France) during
the late nineteenth century.
In the 1870s Ernest L. Ransome was managing a successful stone company (producing concrete
blocks as artificial stone) in San Francisco. In 1884 he patented a concrete reinforcement system using
twisted square rods to help strengthen the grip between the concrete and reinforcing. His most
important architectural use of reinforced concrete was the Junior Museum of Stanford University, the
first building to use exposed aggregate. Concrete, for the first time in the history of architecture,
became a concern of skilled craftsmen and capable of displaying an inherent beauty.
Francois Hennebique [10] (1842-1921) produced a complete reinforcement method from
researches carried out between the years of 1879 and 1891. He introduced the placement of stirrups
(loops at the ends of the reinforcement bars) in his reinforcement, substituted steel for iron bars, and
took out patents in France and Belgium in 1892 covering his methods. He appreciated that the primary
conditions for successful reinforced concrete construction were impeccable workmanship and
constant supervision. Applying his principles, he went on to build many structures in reinforced
concrete, including several bridges, although most of his structures employed a beam and column
system based on timber or steel forms. His first completely reinforced concrete buildings consisted of
purely utilitarian structures, since these building types allowed the material to be the most apparent
and least contested. The most important advancement in concrete technology that Hennebique
contributed was his perfecting of the construction of the beam-and-slab floor connected
monolithically with iron-reinforced concrete columns. In this accomplishment he had produced what
is for reinforced concrete probably the most typical type of construction. Even at this early stage, the
arrangement of the reinforcement in his very economical building system corresponded exactly to the
flow of forces in the structural analysis. Within ten years of his patents, Hennebique’s system,
“Systeme Hennebique”, was utilized in the construction of about 40000 different structures.
In the meantime, the Ingalls Building was being constructed in Cincinnati, Ohio as the world’s first
iron-reinforced high-rise building [11]. Completed in 1903, the fifteen story landmark structure made
use of an iron reinforced frame developed by Ransome on the basis of Hennebique’s work. Elzner &
Anderson were the architects working with the contractors, Ferro-Concrete Construction Company.
Tests connected with the design of heavily loaded floor slabs were being conducted by an engineer
and building contractor who would become one of the greatest pioneers in concrete technology Robert Maillart (1872 - 1940). Maillart was a pupil of Hennebique, but did not follow his master’s
conventional post and beam methods, or his tendency to support slabs on ribs. His idea represented
the antithesis to Hennebique’s well-known loadbearing system. For it was a total loadbearing
structure carried by columns alone, without additional beams. Maillart reached this ideal with his
“mushroom” columns in 1909.
This construction no longer differentiated between columns, beams, and floors, but instead the
columns spread to merge into a beamless floor slab in an organic manner. Just one year later he built a
warehouse in Zurich with this proposal. Maillart had discovered the way to reinforce a flat or curved
concrete slab. He had the ability to conceive concrete structures as a whole in order to break away
from the construction principles of ‘bearing and loading’. He went on to apply this same principle to
many beautiful bridges, such as the Salginatobel Bridge in Switzerland. In his bridges, the roadways
or railways were no longer loads supported by arches, but instead became integral parts of the bridge
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itself, thus serving a constructive function, with a great saving of material and a greater degree of
safety. Maillart formulated the theory that durability and strength in concrete are not synonymous
with massiveness.
Summary
During the Roman Empire, Roman concrete (or opus caementicium) was made from quicklime,
pozzolana and an aggregate of pumice. Its widespread use in many Roman structures, a key event in
the history of architecture termed the Roman Architectural Revolution, freed Roman construction
from the restrictions of stone and brick material and allowed for revolutionary new designs in terms of
both structural complexity and dimension. Modern structural concrete differs from Roman concrete
in two important details. First, its mix consistency is fluid and homogeneous, allowing it to be poured
into forms rather than requiring hand-layering together with the placement of aggregate, which, in
Roman practice, often consisted of rubble. Second, integral reinforcing steel gives modern concrete
assemblies great strength in tension, whereas Roman concrete could depend only upon the strength of
the concrete bonding to resist tension.
References
[1] Vitruvius, Pollio (transl. Morris Hicky Morgan, 1960), The Ten Books on Architecture. Courier
Dover Publications. ISBN 0-486-20645-9.
[2] Information on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pantheon
[3] Information on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mimar_Sinan
[4] Lee, Paula: Journal of Architectural Education, 60 (4), p.39-46, Apr 2007.
[5] Setchell, J. R. M.: Notes and Records of the Royal Society, 25 (1), p.79-86, Jun 1970.
[6] Flatt, Robert J. / Roussel, Nicolas / Cheeseman, Christopher R.: Journal of the European Ceramic
Society, 32 (11), p.2787-2798, Aug 2012.
[7] Information on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferrocement
[8] Teshome Gebregziabhier, Tekeste: dissertation, Jul 2009.
[9] British History Online, Aug 2012.
[10] McBeth, Douglas: "Francois Hennebique (1842–1921) – Reinforced concrete pioneer",
Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers, 1998
[11] Information on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingalls_Building
Advances in Manufacturing Science and Engineering
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The Birth and Use of Concrete and Reinforced Concrete
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