Translucent Concrete: 30% Lighter, Lets 80% of Light Through

Victor Bridge

Two Mexican college students have invented a concrete that are a 30% lighter than the traditional one, allows the passage of until 80% of the light and presents/displays the same conditions of hardness and resistance to earthquakes that the traditional one. The manufacturers calculate that she will begin to be sold anywhere in the world in less than two years.

Their special characteristics must to a secret ingredient that are added to the mixture of gravel, cement and sand with which the traditional concrete makes, without needing no special machinery. The concrete, known as concrete in Latin America, is a material that comprises of the structure of almost all the buildings.

Video is in Spanish

The translucent concrete is sold in Mexico from year 2005, when two students of civil engineering of the Metropolitan Independent University (UAM), developed its formula and founded a company to make it.

At the moment the sales have been very slow, had, according to their inventors, to that they spend all their time to patent the formula in several countries and to realise new tests.

Although the characteristics of this concrete would allow to use it to construct buildings, its high price (3 times greater than the one of the traditional one), causes that the company makes that it supplies especially concrete plates with gravel of colors showy, easy to transport, to place in ceilings and walls.

In fact, already they have made a piece for a heliport, the facade of a building in the state of Querétaro and have in march a project for the University Museum of Contemporary Art in City of Mexico.

Via | Terra
In Genciencia | Translucent concrete