68 utenti della rete avevano questa curiosità: Spiegami: Why does modern concrete/asphalt break so easily compared to ancient/brick roads?
It's construction season in my state again and it always makes me wonder why they always repair the same roads over and over every year. Shouldn't our 1st world country and 'higher sense of technology' be able to make solid roads compared to older ways such as stone or brick?
Ed ecco le risposte:
Because brick roads were uneven and people had a lower standard.
Ancient roads accomodated foot traffic and relatively light vehicles. They needed only to not be dirt, so the surface of the road doesn’t matter.
Modern roads carry much heavier loads and the surface must be smooth. An uneven road quickly destroys heavy vehicles movung quickly.
Modern roads are much more durable than brick and stone roads. They are just also used significantly more.
-
Those old stone roads weren’t dealing with 18 wheelers driving over them. They weren’t even dealing with cars weighing thousands of pounds each driving all over them all day long 24/7. The amount of wear on “Ye Olde Stoney Roade” was trivial compared to modern roads.
-
Those ancient brick and stone roads that still exist are most definitely maintained. The wear. They crack. Water gets in and freezes. They wear a lot really. Just where they still exist they’re normally in quieter areas. None of them are highways taking tens of thousands of vehicles a day or they’d be rubble within a week.
Modern concrete and asphalt roads are very high performance, just we have enormous demands of them.
The last thing you want to do is drive a motorized vehicle at highway speeds over brick. Initially it would be OK, but bricks will dip and rise over time making it dangerous to drive on at any high rate of speed. The best solution is to install concrete in chunks (like the autobahn) so you get all the benefits of concrete – resistance to cratering in the sun, water channels help keep water off the tires, rough concrete is safer to brake on, concrete roads can last an awful long time. The problem is cracking, especially in colder climates where you will get water expanding and contracting seasonally. Solution, put them down like huge bricks, that way when one cracks it won’t spread, and it is a fairly simple task to replace the section.
A real simply way to think of it is like this:
Ever think “hey, these tires would last a lot longer if they were made of something more durable than rubber!”
The problem is that when you go for a more durable material, you are sacrificing other properties that make it safer to drive on.
They weren’t building roads that had to endure up to hundreds of thousands of vehicles a day that all weigh more than a ton.
That shit is hard to do without spending money.
We don’t like spending money up front to get things that will last longer, so they fall to shit after a decade.
They built roads for ox carts and shit. No where near the wear and tear of a modern road.