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Iran's Smart Concrete Can Cope With Earthquakes and Bombs
PolygamousRanchKid writes "Iran is an earthquake zone, so its engineers have developed some of the toughest building materials in the world. Ultra-high performance concrete (UHPC) could also be used to protect hidden nuclear installations from the artificial equivalent of small earthquakes, namely bunker-busting bombs. UHPC is based—like its quotidian cousins—on sand and cement. In addition, though, it is doped with powdered quartz (the pure stuff, rather than the tainted variety that makes up most sand) and various reinforcing metals and fibers. UHPC can withstand more compression than other forms of concrete. UHPC is also more flexible and durable than conventional concrete. It can therefore be used to make lighter and more slender structures. All of which is fine and dandy for safer dams and better sewers, which threaten no one. But UHPC's potential military applications are more intriguing—and for many, more worrying. Deep bunkers can be tackled in other ways. America's Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) has looked at what is known in the jargon as functional defeat, in other words bombing their entrances shut or destroying their electrical systems with electromagnetic pulses. They are also working on active penetrators—bombs which can tunnel through hundreds of meters of earth, rock and concrete. Development work is also under way on esoteric devices such as robot snakes, carrying warheads, which can infiltrate via air ducts and cable runs."
...brought to you by "the department of give-us-more-tax-dollars."
capable of withstanding repeated ballistic impacts: Many engineers are seen with iPads doing structural-ballistic simulations involving various geometries made of wood, ice and stone, and green "test animals", whose survival indicates the durability of said structures.
Hey, you war-mongering assholes, fuck off and stop trying to justify your next mass-murder. If you start this war, the blood is all on your hands, just like the last one was.
So, just because this "high performance" concrete was developed in Iran, it has dangerous military applications? Dangerous as in able to withstand US bombs? Should we start banning defensive technologies in order to make it easier for the US to invade?
If this was developed in any other nation, "military applications" would never have been mentioned.
Please don't fall for the fearmongering, Iran is not going to attack anyone, they know very well they would be instantly overrun. This is Iraq all over again.
As an aside, while I very much object to anyone including the US having nuclear weapons, I can't really see why Iran having them - if they indeed do - is a problem while Israel having them is not, a country that has constantly refused to sign the non-proliferation treaty and employs an Apartheid-like policy towards Palestinians.
Iran is a very religious country, so is the US. Muslims want to kill Christians, Christians want to kill Muslims. Iran has corrupt leaders, that allow their people to suffer hunger, poor health care and bad education in order to spend millions in armament, this is also true about the US. It's also true that Iran is a fairly small country with few resources, while the US is a huge country and the most resourceful on the planet, and while Iran has failed in most military operations it has attempted, the US has succeeded. Iran is trying to get some nuclear weapons, the US is the only country to have ever used them on a civilian population. Currently Iran has no nuclear weapons, while the US has thousands. Iran is not currently at war, while the US has been consistently starting wars every year for 200 years.
And yet, when the US develops a new weapon, a new fighter, a new bomb, a new droid, or any other military advancement and clearly plans to use it soon at war, it's praised for its technological achievement. But when Iran develops a new construction technology, that has tens of applications, one of them, defense, then it's something we should be worried about and it makes Iran evil, and we should ask the glorious united states of america to destroy them real soon.
Fuck that bullshit, your western christian theocracy is no better than the eastern muslim theocracies, and just as crazy, delusional and violent.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
Putting aside the obvious political flamebait, are we really now at a point where anything that's been at all updated since the 1950s is considered "smart"? The term makes sense for things that have a microcontroller added to them, but that's not the case here. This concrete isn't any smarter than my toothbrush.
You mean they wouldn't be able to put a nuke in a shipping container? Or perhaps hand a few over to Hezbolla and or Hamas? There is more than one way to "touch" America and missiles would probably be the last method used.
I guess you missed the whole 9/11 thing. You don't need ICBMs to attack another country.
Stop, please stop with the rhetoric. What happened on 9/11 were terrorists acts. It was not a declaration of war, it was not an invasion. It was not an attack in any meaningful way.
Otherwise any criminal enterprise is an attack that warrants some kind of military response.
And by the way, using airplanes to carry out a series of terrorist acts in the US is nothing out of the ordinary. They just used the most common means of transportation. Using the airplane in the US is like using a train in most smaller countries. The reason being obviously a difference in scale.
This is what is wrong with the US way of thinking. Everything has to be reduced to an "attack on something" so we can justify using our shiny new toys (aircraft carriers, tanks, F-22, drones, bunker busters, you name it) on the stupid poor guy standing on the other side of the street.
Seriously if Iran is any kind of menace (and it isn't) the world should be going apeshit on India, Pakistan, Cina, North Korea and Israel. You want to know the real menace ? The US and its tradition of starting wars for fucked up reasons (and half the western countries going along for the ride because of corrupt politicians say hello to Tony Blair!! ).
Could we stop the comments on abstract issues and just stick to the concrete one.
Back in 2003, an Iranian student, with the help of a professor from Iran, won the first prize in a competition organized by the American Concrete Institute
For more info, look into this page ---> http://www.concrete.org/STUDENTS/st_concreteprojects03_winners.htm
About the prize winning concrete ?
It has been used for building Iran's underground bunkers, which house Iran's nuclear facilities
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Hell, they could put a nuke in a train, and drive the train right into the middle of the white house; then detonate it.
Maybe they could get Bruce Lee to drive the train, jump out right before it hit, and rip the pres' heart right out of his chest and show it to him before he dies.
Once you take that little step into insane, there is no point in coming up short.
Iran needs everything it can to defends itself. note that the puppet EU organization has collaborated with the pro-war activists (i.e. criminals responsible for Iraq) again in this issue. the oil and central banking sanctions are a disgrace. we shouldn't be attacking a country like that. fuck that EU which is turning its constituent countries into financial dictatorships. fuck NATO, the umbrella puppet of the US military forces.
I could write something better, but I'm tired and this is slashdot.
Pretty much everyone has known for quite awhile how to make super-hard concrete. Both the USA and USSR used it to make missile silo covers in the 1950s, and improvements on that recipe gave us silos able to withstand 2000 psi in the 70s. The recipes aren't difficult for UHPC - it's really a quality-control issue with just a little tinkering to get the recipe and pour right.
The new interesting concretes are not for hardness, but flexibility. Only a moron would use quartz for this kind of application - synthetic fibers in the mix seem to be the way to go, with some change in the types and geometrics of gravel used as the aggregate (including replacing it with funky star-cut composites). To earthquake resistance, you don't want a more rigid (and hard) concrete, you want one which will flex without cracking.
I don't doubt that Iran has been using the super-hard stuff for various military facilities, though I doubt they've got the good quality-control needed to have the 2000 psi stuff done right. Still, 500 psi stuff (5x better than 'average') is Good Enough for most things. I also wouldn't be surprised if they're trying to get into the more advanced flex-crete business, though I seriously doubt they've got the materials science industry to make serious headway on that.
And, the primary problem with Iran having a bomb isn't having them use it on Israel. Or the Saudis, or anyone else. Nope, Iran itself wouldn't actually use it one anyone; rather, it's the decent probability that they might just "loan" or "lose" one to one of the myriad of truly crazy real terrorist organizations they sponsor. Those people will use it on someone. That's been the big issue with the Pakistani nukes for two decades - not so much that Pakistan might nuke someone (even India), but that the lax controls the Pakistanis have on their nukes might result in one or more of them going walkabout. That risk is even bigger with Iran, and something I don't think can be tolerated.
That said, the current path of sanctions and diplomacy to get the Iranian leadership on-board with IAEA inspections again and giving up the weaponization programs (which are in low-gear, not overdrive) seems to be working fine. There's no need to bomb anyone at this point. We're a couple of years away from really having to do that, at the worst-case scenario. So the Israelis need to just shut their mouths again, and recognize that the USA and Israel's best interest (not to mention the Saudis, Turks, and most of the region's) interests are all aligned here with making sure that Iran doesn't actually get the bomb.
-Erik
There are always four sides to every story: your side, their side, the truth, and what really happened.
Now cement is dangerous? "experts" are worried!
OK, Iran is an evil sexist country with a lot of political problems being handled poorly. Not a country I'd ever live in.
But guys? Can you really afford another war? You hardly finished in Iraq - you'll be doing it again in twenty years. You're doing worse in Afghanistan!
Let them have the damn cement, it sounds like they could really use it anyway. So could we, actually.
Just let this one go, try to devise a long term plan to improve relations over time - its has to be cheaper and frankly couldn't be worst then ranting about ways you'll kill them even if they do hide in these possible bunkers.
Its a bit insane sounding. Imagine being from Iran reading these paranoid threats?
Canadian for the record, but we are generally loyal to even our loud, obnoxious, untrustworthy friends to the south.
"Computers will never truly be free until the last windows user is strangled with the entrails of the last mac user."
Iran is not an Arab nation. Its population is Caucasian, and is non Arab,
although it is a Moslem country.
It is the cradle of civilization, a beautiful country despite the US Propaganda that
makes it look like a pile of rubble, stones and mud huts. It has a high degree of
education, many fine universities and research institutes and takes foreingn aid
from no one.
Iran has never invaded any other country, and as far as I know they have never
lifted a finger at the USA. Other than shooting down our million-dollar drones
that violate their airspace.
If you're not familiar with MEMRI, this article puts it in context:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/aug/12/worlddispatch.brianwhitaker
They've an Israeli run translation 'Research Institute' that translates selective news stories from Israels enemies, designed to emphasize the worst aspects of those countries in western media.
So a typical example will translate some extremist religious nuts comments, but not the people calling him a fringe crazy. Thus you get the impression of Israels enemies as all extremist nuts and thus are more likely to continue the $3 billion a year in donations you make to Israel.
As some comments above have pointed out, the media as of late (well, probably always) has taken a really bias view of this Iran vs. US thing, to the point that.. I don't really know what to think.
In my quest to find less bias opinions, I turned to al-jazeera and other arab news sources to view comments from those who refer to Isreal as the "evil zionist regime." While many comments were ludicrous (but perhaps no more ludicrous than pro-US comments on CNN or something), there were many who pointed out that the US and Isreal have been known to carry out assassinations in Iran and other countries with basic impunity.
The question posed was, if Iran assassinated a scientist or politician in the United States, what kind of blow-back would there be? Why is the US/Isreal allowed to carry these out events without any world condemnation?
It's a difficult topic, because as much as I believe the US is going about things in the wrong way, if there's going to be someone who is the "world police" and the global power, I would prefer the US to any other country. Yet, it is clearly shielding the public from the double-standards it holds. Why does nobody else (general public) notice this? It's weird.
....And what does Saudi Arabia have to do with Iran? They're close allies with the US and enemies with Iran, which happens to have a fair number of native Christians (mostly Armenians and Georgians) as well as Jews and Zoroastrians who actually are allowed to own Bibles and Torahs are allowed exemptions from certain Islamic laws such as the ones on alcohol consumption. Said Christians and Jews and Zoroastrians also have their own guaranteed members of parliament, as set by the Iranian constitution.
I certainly won't sugarcoat the condition of minorities in Iran as paradise, and as an atheist I wouldn't want to live in either country, but Iran is certainly leaps and bounds better than the Saudis in terms of minorities. The Saudis don't even tolerate other sects of Islam, and in fact they destroyed the tomb of Mohammed, as well as other prominent Muslim figures, in the fear that they might turn into objects of worship by Islamic sects that have traditionally venerated at those sites. Bringing up Saudi Arabia as a reason to stop Iran really is a red herring.
The Onion's irreverent piece: Iran Worried U.S. Might Be Building 8,500th Nuclear Weapon.
It's a typical situation: a man, a stash and another man after that stash.
The rule is - never go after the stash, always go after the man.
Why bomb the facilities while you can go after leadership?
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.