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Ayup. The whole reason why the Coliseum held together in a seismically active zone was the fact that the Romans used iron clamps and lead rebar. One of the re
by bsder 4y ago
Ayup. The whole reason why the Coliseum held together in a seismically active zone was the fact that the Romans used iron clamps and lead rebar.
One of the reasons why you see "drill holes" in the Coliseum is that was how people were extracting the valuable metals.
Of course, once the clamps and rebar were extracted, the Coliseum was now quite vulnerable to earthquakes.
- jutrewag 4y agoThat’s interesting. Wouldn’t lead rebar solve the problems we’re having with rust and corrosion (radioactivity/toxicity question aside). Does it even have the structural strength to be useful?
- bsder 4y agoLead wouldn't solve our modern uses of rebar. Rebar in modern concrete is mostly to provide stength in tension as opposed to "compression" (which concrete is quite strong in). Modern building then relies on this strength. The lead rebar in the Colisseum was mostly to keep blocks that were laid in compression the ability to stay locked and aligned even if they got shifted a bit.
- jaclaz 4y agoLead has nearly no tensile strength. It was used to fix the clamps/braces to keep stones together in the stone masonry, the clamps themselves were steel alright. https://artofmaking.ac.uk/explore/tools/18/Metal-clamp/pin https://artofmaking.ac.uk/explore/tools/18/Metal-clamp/pin
- KineticLensman 4y agoIIRC correctly from a visit to a Roman site in Jordan, the Romans used thin lead sheets between the segments of tall columns (in temples etc). This allowed the columns to flex slightly. The guide demonstrated this by inserting a coin between two segments, and you could see the coin moving very slightly up and down as the apparently immobile column moved.
- regularfry 4y agoWhere can I read more about this? I've not come across lead rebar before and Google is being spectacularly unhelpful.