How did Ancient Romans create concrete that has survived for millennia? Prof. Admir Masic and team uncovered new evidence in the walls of Pompeii that could inform today’s designs. Their new paper in Nature Communications explores a recently discovered construction site and finds the clearest evidence yet that Roman builders were using the “hot mixing” process that creates self-healing concrete.

As Zach Winn writes for MIT News, “Not only did the concrete samples contain the lime clasts described in Masic’s previous paper, but the team also discovered intact quicklime fragments pre-mixed with other ingredients in a dry raw material pile, a critical first step in the preparation of hot-mixed concrete.”

Prof. Masic explains why this matters today: “This is relevant because Roman cement is durable, it heals itself, and it’s a dynamic system. The way these pores in volcanic ingredients can be filled through recrystallization is a dream process we want to translate into our modern materials. We want materials that regenerate themselves.”

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