How Did Roman Architecture Contribute To The Use Of Concrete?

The centuries of work that the Romans used to build Rome, left an incredible impact on today’s culture. Ancient Roman architects did get some of their earliest ideas from the Greeks, Etruscans, Egyptians and Persians, but the Roman architecture dominates any other architecture that has been done before. During the Pax Romana period, the Roman architecture was at its best. Therefore, what are their most significant inventions that benefitted us so greatly? The biggest invention that Roman architecture brought was the use of concrete. The architects of Rome brought to conclusion that concrete is stronger than the commonly-used marble. Concrete was easier to decorate with because they could easily sculpt various shapes onto it, unlike marble,
But how is the Colosseum still standing after being built nineteen hundred years ago? The Roman architectures were very intelligent people. The secret to their invention of concrete was mixing volcanic ash, lumps of volcanic rock, and lime together. Although we don’t use the same recipe as the Romans did, their invention greatly impacted our use of concrete today. Another area of Roman architecture that greatly benefitted us today were their bridges. With the arrival of the Roman Empire, bridge building techniques were greatly transformed by the introduction of arches. The architectures used arches instead of covering the entire surface below the bridge with stone. They did this because enabling downward force from the top of the bridge arch met the equal force that was pushed from the ground in the bridge foundations. The result of this design made the bridge very strong. The stone arch bridges were so strong, that they could carry as much load as its own weight. Their invention of bridges gave much needed connection between cities, ports, mines and other civilizations near them. With so many influential knowledge in their handy work, the builders continued building bridges throughout Europe, Asia
Even today, hundreds of the original Roman bridges are left standing around the world. The last area I will talk about are the Roman domes. The reason that the Romans started building domes is because they acknowledged the benefit of large areas being uninterrupted by columns, walls or any other roof supporting structure. However, the vision was not possible because their technology of unreinforced concrete and stonework roofs could not cross large distances without cracking and failing. They knew that their stonework and concrete both accomplished well in firmness, but badly in pressure. They couldn’t cross large distances with flat structures because the structures will experience bending and stress. These bending stresses would cause cracking on the stiff side. It would result in the concrete or stonework structure collapsing if the crack advances through the cross section. The Romans possibly tried this design, and saw that they needed to create a more appropriate technique of getting the large open areas. For a large group of people that had amazing knowledge of arches, the dome seems like a logical advancement, because it is simply an arch rotated three hundred