Reinforced plascrete
| Reinforced Plascrete | |
|---|---|
| Type | Construction Material |
| Tech Level | TL–12 |
| Cost | Cr55 |
| Size | 225 liters (once reinforced) |
| Weight | 500 kg |
Reinforced plascrete is an upgraded form of plascrete, with strips of superdense plascrete inside for greater strength. It is cheap and widely used enough, that many think of it as "a TL–12 version of plascrete" and just call it "plascrete".
Just as concrete has better compressive than tensile strength, so too does plascrete. One common TL–2 solution for concrete is to add reinforcing bars of metal into the concrete, but plascrete is strong enough that the same metal bars do not appreciably help. The development of superdense provides an equivalent solution.
Reinforced plascrete starts off as ordinary plascrete, though of a mixture that facilitates gravitational compression. After the plascrete is put in place and hardened via electric current, a strong but short range artificial gravity system is waved over the plascrete, partially collapsing the molecular structure in thin lines, typically in a grid pattern. Care must be taken to collapse along a gradient, rather than strongly crushing one section but leaving the immediate vicinity untouched, which would cause the collapsed section to crumble. As many construction instructors have put it, "make smooth valleys, not sharp canyons". Additional plascrete is then formed over the resulting troughs to make a smooth surface, and encase the superdense portions.
This method of reinforcement is not compatible with foamed plascrete, which remains more widely used than reinforced plascrete. Reinforced plascrete retains the waterproof, airtight, and micro-organism resistance qualities of plascrete. Compressing like this significantly enhances tensile strength at some cost to compressive strength; the optimal mix is about 11% compressed, the exact percentage depending on which additives are present in the plascrete. The result of this process should not be confused with superdense armor, which uses different ingredients as well as 100% compression instead of 11%. Reinforced plascrete is most commonly manufactured on a construction site from sand and aggregates, but plascrete suitable for reinforcement is also sold dry, most often in 250 liter drums (which, with 11% compression, becomes 225 liters of reinforced plascrete).
- Author & Contributor: Adrian Tymes