Previously, a yield strength of 5,000 pounds per square inch (psi) was enough for concrete to be rated as “high strength,” with the best going up to 10,000 psi. The new UHPC can withstand 40,000 psi or more.
The greater strength is achieved by turning concrete into a composite material with the addition of steel or other fibers. These fibers hold the concrete together and prevent cracks from spreading throughout it, negating the brittleness. “Instead of getting a few large cracks in a concrete panel, you get lots of smaller cracks,” says Barnett. “The fibers give it more fracture energy.”
That is depressingly insightful. See also: the internal war on everyone who isn’t a middle-aged white cis het man (and even some of them, too). Just negativity all around.
What really brings me down it’s the certainty that even if that is guy was suddenly not there anymore, there is a whole gaggle of like folk ready to continue that same rhetoric. How do you even dig yourselves out of that?