Improved Reinforced Concrete – Use Sand & No Gravel or Rebar

Please read my Build Structural Walls or Doors or Windows out of Paper or Cloth and Build InfraStructure Quickly, Easily and Cheaply pages first. This technology addresses permanent building solutions to replace our very expensive, heavy and thick re-inforced concrete.
Instead of using sand and gravel to form an aggregate, use just the sand. How is this going to work? Like other approaches on this site, a field will be applied to the sand within a mold-like structure.
This mold-like structure uses the cloth or screening material described in Build Structural Walls page above.
Let’s get a little outside the box, say you have a flexible/bendable/foldable/compressible, nearly two-inch thick (15/8s inch) fiberglass structure that is composed of squares that are 3/8″ x 3/8″ x 3/8″ (or more/less depending on the application); this becomes the replacement for gravel and rebar.
OK. Now, you have a mold that is 3 inches wide with 2-inch structural insert described above. Next, you fill the mold with sand; you can vibrate the sand from the outside of the mold to ensure even distribution.
Now, you set the sand into a permanent configuration. How? Again, using a field that bonds the sand particles together into a permanent, rock hard structure. Sand is silicon; it is a metal that can be welded. That is essentially what is being done by using this field; it is a form of cold welding. See my page on removing salt from concrete walls; that, too, is using a field with unusual properties.
Great news, the sand does not have to be salt-free; you can use sand dredged from the ocean. Why? The sodium mixed in the sand (salt sand) actually makes the welding of the silicon stronger, but is not required for “normal” concrete strength.
So… instead of having reinforced concrete walls that are six or eight inches thick, they can be replaced with walls that are three or four inches thick, but are much stronger than the aggregate/rebar walls. Not only that, the timing of molding the sand is totally within the builders control and not dependent on when the concrete was activated and how long it has been hardening during transit and delays.
One last point, how much hardening (and strengthening) of the wall is totally under control of the builder. The Hardening or Welding field can be used to make a soft, medium or hard setting of the sand. This can be made harder latter, if desired/required.
The other major advantage is that the “new” hardened sand walls do not have any cracks; the silicon becomes a less dense form of glass that is much more flexible. It is stronger and about the same flexibility as reinforced concrete with aggregate and rebar. The other advantage is that the rebar does not expand with water seepage into the structure; there is no seepage and there is no rebar and, thus, no rust expansion cracks.

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