Reinforced Concrete

Reinforced concrete is a composite material from steel and concrete. Both material components are combined so that they support each other, so to say, by neutralizing their respective weaknesses: e.g. the brittleness of concrete being compensated by the tenacity of the steel reinforcement; the tendency to buckling of slender steel bars being blocked by the concrete matrix. Although the convergence of these two materials belonging to two widely diverging material categories is not without deformational conflicts, both materials nevertheless adapt to each other thanks to their benevolent ductile (steel) or visco-elastic (concrete) behaviour.