Why is the hoover dam so thick if the center won’t cure for 125 years?
In: 354
The concrete cured long ago. Curing is the process where the cement reacts with water, all meaningful parts of this reaction happen within a few weeks of the concrete being poured.
The chemical reactions generate a lot of heat, and when you’re pouring something that big the heat could take a long time to dissipate **if it were poured all at once**.
The dam wasn’t poured in one go, it was poured in a large number of smaller pours, with water filled pipes used for active cooling to help dissipate the heat faster. For the meaningful portions of the curing, the heat was dissipated long ago.
As to why it was poured that thick – that’s how big the engineering needed it to be to safely and reliably hold back that much water across a span that big. If they could have used less they would have.
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