Concrete,an Alternative Material

If ordinary Portland cement had been an expensive product it would still have been widely used, but much more highly respected. While its dominant use is as a structural material in civil engineering there are many other applications that can be made in which cement-based materials are economically and technically sound.

Cement is also a material that can be made from raw materials that are universally abundant and when diluted by the addition of an aggregate the concrete is a low energy product, an extremely important factor in the current energy conscious society.

Some of the ways in which the properties of concretes can be controlled and modified are discussed and the properties are compared with those of competitive materials. Examples will be given of the ways that these properties can be exploited in the manufacture of articles or components that have traditionally been made in other materials. In particular the use of concrete to replace cast-iron and steel structural components in the machine tool industry is discussed.