It is difficult to understate how concrete reinforcement changed the world, and just how much it has shaped the skylines of nearly every major town and city.
From skyscrapers and buildings to landmarks such as Christ the Redeemer, reinforced concrete is an essential part of ensuring that a concrete structure has the strength and flexibility to survive at the scales it needs to.
It works because it marries the exceptional compressive strength concrete has whilst using materials embedded into the concrete mix to provide extra tensile strength against pulling forces.
This means that a strong wind will not cause the concrete to crack, allowing architects and designers the ability to make buildings that reach the sky.
The most common material used for reinforcement is steel, often in a particular type of bar or mesh known as rebar, to the point that when people talk about reinforced concrete, they are almost always talking about steel reinforcement.
However, steel is not the only material that can be used for metal reinforcement, and there are certain use cases where alternative materials might be the best option.
Reinforcement using glass fibres has been primarily used with ground floor settings and as a component of sprayed concrete, the latter purpose having proved vital for inexpensive, rapid and high quality repairs of concrete structures.
Other materials can be used to create reinforced fibre, including plastic and steel, but it is primarily used as a supplement for conventional steel-reinforcements due to the established characteristics of the latter and how construction projects are designed around both its strength and weaknesses.
There are other newer materials that are particularly promising in the field of reinforced concrete, with graphite-reinforced plastic managing to be corrosion-proof, lighter than steel whilst possessing a similar level of strength, as well as the theoretical and very expensive carbon nanotube technology.
The future of reinforcement will likely consist of a range of different materials tailored to very specific properties needed in a building.