What are the Structural Basics for Concrete?
Concrete is strong in compression. So what does that really mean? To understand compressive strength, think about several packs of crackers sitting on the floor. If you carefully stand on those packs of crackers, your weight will probably be supported, but you are putting those crackers in compression. Your weight tends towards crushing those crackers. If you jump up and land on those packs of crackers, you will increase the force applied and probably crush the crackers. You will have made the crackers fail in compression. Now try to jump on a concrete sidewalk. You’d have to jump pretty high to make that sidewalk crush under your weight. In fact, you probably couldn’t make that sidewalk fail in compression. That’s why concrete gets used so much in construction. But the story doesn’t end with compression. Grab a piece of string and pull in either direction. You’ve just put the string into tension. If you can pull hard enough, the string will fail in tension by snapping. Concrete, while
