[HN Gopher] AI for American-produced cement and concrete
___________________________________________________________________
AI for American-produced cement and concrete
Author : latchkey
Score : 117 points
Date : 2026-04-01 17:17 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (engineering.fb.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (engineering.fb.com)
| barbazoo wrote:
| > Meta's AI for concrete model can help suppliers more quickly
| incorporate U.S. materials into their mixes through an approach
| called adaptive experimentation.
|
| > Proposes high-potential candidates: The AI suggests new mixes
| most likely to meet target specifications and can compare
| performance between U.S.-made and foreign materials
|
| US imports 22% of its cement
|
| > In 2024, Portland and blended cement were produced in 99 plants
| in 34 U.S. states, led by Texas, Missouri, California, and
| Florida. Nevertheless, there was significant import reliance. Net
| imports were 22% of total consumption, with the major source
| countries being Turkey (32%), Canada (22%), and Vietnam (10%).
| U.S. exports of cement last year were negligible.
|
| https://www.constructconnect.com/construction-economic-news/....
|
| I'm assuming this isn't for national security reasons, probably
| more to help the domestic industry deal with tariffs. I hope Meta
| used their extensive connections to the government.
| CrazyStat wrote:
| Given the model is several years old, I assume this write up
| with its focus on incorporating domestic materials is so Mark
| Zuckerberg has something "America First" to point to next time
| he meets with Trump.
|
| This is not to denigrate the work--experimental design can be a
| huge force multiplier and making it more accessible to people
| on the ground is a great thing to do. One of my favorite grad
| school courses was an experimental design class with four
| students where we spent about half of the semester doing real
| life experimental design for a chemistry phd student who was
| trying (and mostly failing, before we got involved) to create a
| molecular filter with specific properties.
| wxw wrote:
| Awesome. People take concrete for granted. Even at small scales
| (e.g. your patio) with formulas provided on the cement bag,
| concrete can go wrong (crazing, scaling, cracks). There's a lot
| of unappreciated craft in the work, not only in the composition
| and mixing, which is what this research seems dedicated to, but
| also in the placing, leveling, curing, finishing.
| alephnerd wrote:
| ^ This.
|
| Civil Engineering is hard, and concrete is a perfect example of
| how something as "simple" as concrete in reality requires
| significant interdisciplinary collaboration with domain experts
| in ChemE, MatSE, Physics, Applied Math, and CS.
|
| Some of the most robust HPC applications I saw back when I was
| an undergrad were done by Civil and Structural Engineers in the
| ONG space.
| seemaze wrote:
| First there was the rampocalypse. Then there was cementpocalypse.
| Let just hope the AI datacenters don't latch on to biofuel to
| supplement their energy requirements. It's just more profitable
| for farmers to sell calories to the AI overlords, the consumer
| food market is just a low margin grind.
| alephnerd wrote:
| Most large scale DC projects I've know are primarily leveraging
| solar with grid batteries because of the low upfront cost and
| state incentives.
| seemaze wrote:
| Apologies for the sarcasm. I appreciate the drive for
| renewables the current AI DC buildout brings with it.
|
| I have real fears that building materials will experience the
| same inflationary pressures computer memory is currently
| experiencing. The U.S. TSMC and Intel fab construction alone
| in the last couple years has had an outsized impact on
| building costs.
| elictronic wrote:
| The US construction industry does about 3 trillion in
| revenue per year. Those two fabs are something like 20
| billion per year. 2% is a lot but markets can handle that
| just fine. Local markets will have higher prices.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| I honestly thought this was going to be an April Fools gag.
| ajkjk wrote:
| They sure are stretching to find a way to make this have
| something to do with being pro-America.
| k33n wrote:
| Increasing the quality and quantity of domestic cement output
| will provide a pretty clear national benefit.
| devsda wrote:
| That part made me double check the date today and now I'm not
| sure.
| Mr_P wrote:
| I had to double check that this wasn't an April Fools joke. The
| GitHub project has commits from 2 weeks ago, so it's not.
|
| Looking more closely though, this looks a lot like the Google "AI
| Cookie" from 2017, which also used Bayesian Optimization:
| https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/technology/research/ma...
| sebastianeament wrote:
| Google's "Smart Cookie" indeed also used techniques from
| Bayesian Optimization. For some technical detail, see their
| write-up here:
| https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.c...
|
| Our work on concrete here differs in that the problem is both
| 1) an inherently time-varying, and 2) multi-objective. See our
| write-up here for details: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2310.18288
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| > As a result, producers need a way to rapidly explore and
| validate new formulations without spending months in the lab.
|
| How do you bypass the normal process of pouring test articles and
| testing them months and years after cure? This is fundamentally a
| research activity that needs to conduct verifiable science. Not
| something you can guess at with an LLM.
| bluedino wrote:
| All the chemical companies do it. They pair it with testing,
| but still.
| tartoran wrote:
| They have a new scapegoat to blame if things turn out badly.
| plagiarist wrote:
| Why do they need AI for that? Just create another LLC,
| manslaughter any number of people, then have that LLC declare
| bankruptcy. Zero consequences.
| parliament32 wrote:
| Emitting a shrug and "AI made me do it" is cheaper.
| postexitus wrote:
| What part of move fast and break things did you not understand?
| ortusdux wrote:
| What could possibly go wrong?
|
| https://dailygalaxy.com/2026/03/rubber-used-in-undersea-tunn...
| simianwords wrote:
| It doesn't use an LLM
| sebastianeament wrote:
| Hi, I developed the model. We are not bypassing the regular
| testing process, and are not using LLMs, but Gaussian processes
| with vetted test data. The predictions are used as
| recommendations for onsite testing, to accelerate finding
| mixtures with optimal strength-speed-sustainability trade-offs.
| Isamu wrote:
| That's helpful. So instead of a much larger test matrix you
| are using a model to reduce that to the most likely
| candidates, right?
| sebastianeament wrote:
| That's right.
| woah wrote:
| Somebody needs to coin a new term for the scattershot zero-
| thought AI griping that is pervasive in online comments these
| days. Meatslop?
|
| Obviously it's going to be more productive for a manufacturer
| to do a years-long curing test on 100 likely candidates instead
| of 100 random mixes. They obviously already screen candidates
| through traditional methods, but if this AI technique improves
| accuracy, all the better.
| dcre wrote:
| I call it pseudo-critique -- active stupidity in the name of
| critical thinking -- but that's too general.
| mathisfun123 wrote:
| https://danluu.com/cocktail-ideas/
| mathisfun123 wrote:
| hn discourse is not nearly as high-quality as people would
| like to believe.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| It's very bimodal.
| mathisfun123 wrote:
| just like everywhere else? reddit has fairly good wheat
| among the chaff just the same?
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Reddit's top contributors are decent, but there is an
| elite niche of people (granted, mostly of the technical
| variety) who somewhat regularly show up on HN but do not
| contribute much on Reddit.
|
| It does help, of course, that HN is moderated in good
| faith and has a more pervasive commitment to self-
| moderation than Reddit has ever had (outside a few very
| niche subreddits).
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| They both share the same problem: nobody who gripes
| incorrectly like this suffers any consequences. So you
| may as well gripe at anything and everything. Griping
| feels good and you rarely ever get downvotes on HN
| because griping is such a part of the site culture,
| whether you're incorrect or not. There's a recent HN
| guideline about being curmudgeonly but we all know that
| guidelines on this site are rarely followed.
| romaniv wrote:
| The current strategy of the AI hype machine is to exhaust
| people's reserves of attention by presenting a never-ending
| stream of hard-to-verify "positive" claims. It's Gish Gallop
| done on the Internet scale with a never-ending parade of tech
| influencers, proxy "journalists" and low-value accounts. The
| whole strategy aims for saturation and demoralized
| acceptance.
|
| It's no surprise that people readjust their immediate
| reactions by expressing hostility and skepticism about
| anything AI-related without spending much time on analysis.
| In fact, it's an entirely rational repones.
|
| Complaining about it without acknowledging the larger picture
| is disingenuous.
|
| In this particular case, using the term "machine learning"
| would likely avoid the immediate negative reaction.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| It feels related to "it's easier to argue with a smart
| person than an idiot."
|
| It's really exhausting to feel negative all the time when
| faced with the cavalcade of terribly weak claims.
| no_shadowban_6 wrote:
| Written like someone who hasn't used AI since the great
| paradigm shift of December 2025.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| There was no such paradigm shift. LLMs still suck just as
| much as they did before, in the exact same ways they did
| before. In 6 months you'll be trying to BS us about the
| "great paradigm shift of summer 2026".
| rogerrogerr wrote:
| Was that the one immediately after the great paradigm
| shift of November 2025, and before the great paradigm
| shift of January 2026? I think I remember it.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| co-slop. In the categorical sense, slop with all the
| relationships reversed.
| AngryData wrote:
| Jesus I hope they do proper testing for these experimental mixes
| and don't trust whatever random garbage AI decides you should mix
| in. This is exactly the kind of thing AI is absolutely terrible
| at because it has no logical skills or direct experience or
| ability to test it. If your AI coded stuff goes belly up, you get
| to try again. If your multi million dollar cement foundation
| turns out to be sub-par, thats multi million dollars to tear it
| out and then millions more to do it again right, and that is a
| best case scenario. The alternative is people dieing when their
| apartment building collapses.
| sebastianeament wrote:
| We use Gaussian processes trained on vetted test data from
| academic and industry partners. We use these predictions to
| recommend mixes for onsite testing to accelerate finding
| mixtures with optimal strength-speed-sustainability trade-offs.
| None of the data and predictions go untested. The blog post
| goes into this in more detail.
| m4rkuskk wrote:
| What do you mean by "onsite testing"? Wouldn't this be part
| of the pre-submittal process?
| mrbonner wrote:
| Can you at least read the article before criticizing them? They
| explicitly call out that they use Bayesian Optimization
| (Gaussian process) thing for this. It is "AI" but not "LLM"
| like you think it is.
| k33n wrote:
| AI isn't just LLMs.
| ortusdux wrote:
| Tangentially related, but there is a new generation of trucks
| that mix the concrete on-site. They can output small batches and
| change the mix on the fly. They solve a lot of headaches!
|
| https://cementech.com/volumetric-technology/
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Concrete mixer trucks are not new at all actually, they've been
| around for a long time.
| richwater wrote:
| Traditional trucks pick up cement from a facility and rotate
| it to keep it from setting. They don't mix it on the fly. Any
| extra is considered waste is poured out.
| coryrc wrote:
| Where did you get the idea that rotating is "to keep it
| from setting" and not mixing?
| ortusdux wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concrete_mixer#Concrete_mix
| ing...
|
| "Special concrete transport trucks (in-transit mixers)
| are made to mix concrete and transport it to the
| construction site. They can be charged with dry materials
| and water, with the mixing occurring during transport.
| They can also be loaded from a "central mix" plant; with
| this process the material has already been mixed prior to
| loading. The concrete mixing transport truck maintains
| the material's liquid state through agitation, or turning
| of the drum, until delivery. "
|
| Y'all both right.
| m4rkuskk wrote:
| This may work on a small scale, not in most commercial use
| cases. A typical deck pour (400cy) will pour at 70-80cy/hr. you
| got 9-10cy/truck. Meaning you have 7 to 8 minutes to back in
| the truck, empty it into the hopper and leave. You barely have
| time to add water to the mix. Most high-volume concrete plants
| are "dry-batch", which means all the ingredients get dumped
| into the drum and the concrete will get mixed while driving to
| the project site. Also, changing mixes on the fly will not
| "fly". No one is going to authorize the adjustment, because
| what happens when the mix doesn't meet specs... It will need to
| get chipped out.
| ortusdux wrote:
| The target audience of these trucks is sub-10cy jobs. It
| allows companies to cater to smaller customers at a premium.
| bluGill wrote:
| In the large road projects I've seen they bring a concrete
| plant to the job. Buildings still get trucks coming in.
| ortusdux wrote:
| I highly recommend the 9 episode miniseries podcast The Big
| Dig from GBH. Their mismanagement of the concrete was wild.
| simonw wrote:
| I hate April Fools day so much. Is this a joke? I genuinely
| cannot tell.
| danbrooks wrote:
| It's not a joke - but it sure feels suspicious :D
| triceratops wrote:
| Not nearly entertaining enough to be one.
| charcircuit wrote:
| The date on the article is March 30th.
| martinclayton wrote:
| Wet cement is kind of sloppy, so this makes some sense.
| gostsamo wrote:
| The masons just showed up their involvement with AI and
| everything wrong in our times. The masks have fallen. /s
| Animats wrote:
| Hand-held devices for testing concrete properties would be more
| useful. Most concrete problems come from a bad mix - too much
| water, not enough cement, etc. Concrete testing usually involves
| cutting a core out of the poured slab and sending it to a lab.
| Something where you stick a probe in the mix and can reject it
| before pouring would help. Here are some on-site concrete
| testers.[1] They're heavy and a pain to use.
|
| There should be an app for this. But that's so last-decade.
|
| [1] https://store.forneyonline.com/concrete-testing-
| equipment/fr...
| harimau777 wrote:
| I'm surprised the ratios for a given situation isn't
| standardized by now. Is it just people cutting corners?
| Aurornis wrote:
| Working with multiple tons of material that dries out as you
| move it around is hard. There are a lot of steps between the
| concrete being mixed and when it finally reaches the pour.
|
| Cutting out a piece of a slab and sending it to a lab is for
| post-pour validation in serious construction. There are pre-
| pour tests that are much simpler depending on the seriousness
| of what you're building.
|
| The slump test is rather simple, for example:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concrete_slump_test
|
| It's basically a cone with handles and a procedure that's
| easy to learn.
| m4rkuskk wrote:
| They are standardized for a given mix. A mix design that is
| based on a trial badge is submitted to the SEOR prior to
| pouring anything. The mix design shows the ratios ingredients
| (cementitious materials, find and coarse aggregates, water,
| air, admixtures). But Concrete is still a non-homogeneous
| material with lots of variations. Take for instance
| aggregates, if it rained the last two weeks, the moisture
| content will be higher but it may only be a layer on that
| pile. Same goes for gradation (particle size of the rock).
| Sometimes you get a batch with smaller rock. There are a 100
| things that can go wrong to get bad mud.
|
| But yeah, there are concrete plants that cut corners and try
| to save on cement (the most expensive part of the mix), which
| depending on the project may bite them in the ass when they
| have to pay to fixing it.
| themafia wrote:
| When you're making tons of something process variations get
| magnified.
| munk-a wrote:
| No - it's actually local variance in materials coupled with
| the difficulty in moving materials between markets
| economically. Some areas just have better suited limestone or
| gravel or sand and can afford to build resilient structures
| for a fraction of the price that it'd cost in other areas.
|
| This issue here is mainly that it's very expensive to ship
| all the components of a Concrete in the volume necessary in
| an economical manner. Some areas of the world just lost the
| lottery when it comes to having resilient building materials.
|
| Corruption absolutely is an issue as well - I don't mean to
| downplay it - but even if we remove it as a factor there are
| just a lot of variables involved in making a reliable
| Concrete... finding a good mix is an artform and if, for
| instance, your limestone quary suddenly hits a more clay-
| laden amalgamation then your Concrete that was reliably
| lasting for three decades under certain conditions might
| suddenly lose a decade off the expected lifetime. That change
| in material quality can also be difficult to detect so there
| are real quality assurance issues in Concrete mixtures
| outside of just corruption and cutting corners.
| bluGill wrote:
| My grandpa used to be a concrete inspector (for the state of
| Minnesota - if you ever drive i394 there he was one of the
| inspectors for that). Different plants within a normal
| commute of his house often had very different sand and so
| needed a different mix.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| Oh cool, did he work for MNDOT? I sell and run a lot of
| work at their facilities, they have a materials lab over in
| Maplewood off Hwy 36 and English St, and also the weird
| test surface area on 94 west of St Cloud.
| MisterTea wrote:
| On-site, before pouring, they use the slump test:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concrete_slump_test
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| Glad to see someone pointed this out. The test consists of a
| bucket, plywood board & a stopwatch.
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| Hopefully there's good empirical data powering the model
| here, which just added slump prediction:
|
| > _Alongside the event, Meta is releasing a new AI model
| for designing concrete mixes, Bayesian Optimization for
| Concrete (BOxCrete). BOxCrete improves over Meta's previous
| models with more robustness to noisy data as well as new
| features including the ability to predict concrete slump
| (an important indicator of concrete workability)._
|
| Seems hard to imagine not doing a slump test, trusting AI
| when it comes to your multi/many million dollar build outs
| for something so important. But perhaps still useful for
| planning, as a starting place?
| sebastianeament wrote:
| The predictions of the model are used as recommendations
| for onsite testing to accelerate finding mixtures with
| optimal strength-speed-sustainability trade-offs. We are
| not replacing canonical testing with the model.
| bluGill wrote:
| There is a lot of expense in the wasted concrete from all
| the different pours that are slump tested. There is a lot
| of cost from concrete that leaves the plant only to fail
| slump testing when it gets there - not only do you have
| to empty the truck someplace else, but there maybe
| contract provisions if you fail to keep the workers busy.
| Often more than one test is done - if the plant has an
| order that they know will be tested they test before it
| leaves the plant (if it fails they can redirect to a
| different customer who will knowingly accept lesser
| concrete - but concrete cures on the truck so it would be
| unacceptable if rejected at the site to go elsewhere).
| Many smaller jobs skip the test, but they would like it
| done if it was free.
|
| That said, I'm not sure if the value can ever be greater
| than a slump test just before pouring.
| givemeethekeys wrote:
| Seems simple. Is it effective?
| somerandomqaguy wrote:
| Reasonable so, slump tests have been in use for as long
| as I can remember. There's a couple of other tests that
| need to be performed as well for fresh concrete. One for
| air content in the concrete, then temperature and
| volumetric weight.
|
| IIRC the big tests that occur are the cylinder samples
| that are taken as well of the concrete and allowed to
| cure to full strength before destructively tested
| anywhere from a week to a month after pouring.
| munk-a wrote:
| > too much water, not enough cement, etc.
|
| I wanted to mention that Concrete is far more complex and
| regional than folks might imagine. The quality of gravel and
| sand, local impurities - these all contribute massively. It's
| probably best to think of it like a wine's terroir - except,
| unlike a bottle of wine, it's prohibitively expensive to ship
| both the components and the finalized mixture to different
| areas. If a region's limestone has a massive clay impurity then
| it may simply be unsuitable for large structures or require
| extensive filtering to the point of being uneconomical.
|
| It's important to be aware of just how much the local
| geological mix can impact the viability of building with
| concrete because while theoretically we could use perfect
| concrete for every project - at that point most projects would
| simply be too expensive to consider undertaking. There is a
| very large field of engineering around establishing the realism
| required in settling for what you've got for the price you can
| afford in. It can absolutely mean that the materials required
| to build a high rise in Philly might be priced starkly
| differently from the same structure planned in Milan even with
| adjustments for the labor impact on pricing.
| bluGill wrote:
| > it's prohibitively expensive to ship both the components
| and the finalized mixture to different areas.
|
| We could do this if it is important. There are mines in
| Wisconsin the export sand to the middle east because that is
| known to work well for fracking and they don't want to risk a
| local sand not working well. (AFAIK they have never tested
| local sand properties, but it is possible they have and it
| doesn't work). In this case the value of the "perfect" is
| well worth the high shipping costs.
| munk-a wrote:
| We certainly could - it's absolutely possible. The question
| is if it's economical and so far the market has ruled in
| most cases that it isn't. Either the project doesn't need
| such a perfect amalgamation of materials (maybe there is an
| expected deprecation that doesn't justify such an outlay -
| possibly earthquake risk would minimize any expected
| lifespan gain - possibly the materials contractor just
| can't internally justify the added material cost while
| remaining attractive to local contractors).
|
| It's all a balance. Imagine a scenario where you can ship
| in specialized materials to build a bridge with an expected
| lifespan of 100 years and it'll cost 50M - or you could use
| local concrete that has an expected lifespan of 15 years
| and materials would cost 5M. This is a vast simplification
| of the math but, assuming those expected costs it'd be
| cheaper to build using local materials and just schedule
| replacement every 15 years. And, of course, there'll be egg
| on your face if you build the 50M bridge and then suffer a
| massive tsunami in two years that destroys the foundations
| anyways.
|
| To paraphrase a Grady quote: "Engineering isn't a study of
| building the best thing - it's optimizing the quality we
| can get for the cost outlay."
| cyanydeez wrote:
| for fracking, what they want is a perfectly uniform sized
| quartz grain thats rounded. You find this sand where
| multiple processes occur, notably glacial geology. You want
| uniform grains because frackings goal is to open, then
| support an porous structure when you can then pull the
| fluids/gas out without clogging.
|
| It's not really hard to test for this property, but the
| cost efficiency is notable when you find a massive amount
| of it in one place. It still may be washed to remove
| further silt/clay, but they absolutely know the product
| works and they generally know the geology in other places
| don't tend to produce the same material.
|
| There's a fair amount of materials size thats mostly "we
| found this geologic material and this is some magic shit"
| rather than some wholly manufactured human endevour.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| And it's not just the gravel/sand that's important. The
| _water_ itself also differs in its chemical composition (e.g.
| salts, minerals, basic /acidic pH), which can catch you
| really dirty when making concrete. Or when dealing with water
| at all, shout-out to Flint and its infamous water crisis that
| took _eleven years_ to resolve - every single lead service
| pipe had to be physically dug up and replaced.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis#2025
| prpl wrote:
| I think people rarely reject even if it fails a slump test
| though
| GorbachevyChase wrote:
| It's customary to prefix these comments with credentials, so
| I'll just say that I'm a roadway engineer. Sampling at the
| batch plant or even at the truck is not going to give you the
| whole story. While the most common crime of contractors is to
| overwater the concrete slurry to make it flowable, other
| problems in workmanship can arise from failing to vibrate the
| concrete in its forms, leaving voids, or vibrating it too much,
| creating segregation of the aggregate. If the finisher
| overworks the concrete or tries to correct the shape when it's
| green, the that can compromise strength. If the concrete is
| finished too early, you can get delamination. If time allows
| and your contractor is careful they might protect the freshly
| poured concrete and let it cure wet. That makes a huge
| difference in cracking. There is also a whole world of chemical
| additives that structural engineers don't even think about in
| the design process.
|
| I'm not trying to say that mix doesn't matter, or that I'm not
| pleased to see that Facebook is doing something a little more
| noble than surveillance technology, but as with a lot of
| construction issues, it's just not that simple.
| datsci_est_2015 wrote:
| "it's just not that simple" - my career in industrial data
| science in a nutshell. Lots of large companies come into the
| domains I've worked in with grand promises, and while
| sometimes they move the needle in terms of what executive
| leadership within the industry believes is possible, they
| also often poison the well for us smaller firms who provide
| much more leveled and concrete (heh) offerings. Curse IBM,
| for example.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| AI is just the same. CEOs all over the world have fallen to
| the lure of the AI grifters, believing they can fire people
| en masse now and ride it out with the remaining staff until
| AI catches up with the remaining 20% of capability.
|
| Small focused AI/ML companies however that don't deal in
| LLMs? They struggle to find customers, even with stuff that
| clearly works, because they hit the wrong buzzwords.
| scythe wrote:
| The website talks about making cement, but only describes making
| concrete. Making concrete involves mixing cement and fillers with
| water under controlled conditions. Making cement involves heating
| calcium carbonates and oxides with silicon dioxide or calcium
| silicate to form alite at a temperature of (so far as we
| understand) no less than 1250 C. Usually this is done with fossil
| fuels and any impurities in the raw materials (which are cost-
| constrained) go up the flue, making cement plants rather
| polluting. Carbon dioxide is a nearly inevitable byproduct (CaCO3
| + SiO2 >> CaSiO3 + CO2) and is either captured at source (not
| implemented at most facilities) or released.
|
| There is plenty of room for improvement in cement production. I'm
| not sure exactly how to apply AI to it but I guess I was hoping
| for more than this. If we are going to have the infrastructure
| renaissance that keeps being talked up by reformists of various
| stripes, we need more cement.
|
| South America is also a surprising laggard in cement production,
| which is odd considering they have the materials and they need
| the roads. I think that environmental concerns and a continental
| aversion to coal might contribute.
| georgeburdell wrote:
| Wrong day to release this. I had to read halfway through the
| release before realizing it's legitimate.
| jmathai wrote:
| It's legitimate? I was like wtf until I saw the date and then
| closed the tab.
| tempaccount420 wrote:
| The article says "POSTED ON MARCH 30, 2026"
| nerdralph wrote:
| Concrete mixes have become more complicated over time. Flyash has
| been around for a while, GU/L is relatively new and seems to set
| faster, often requiring retarders. Many different water-reducing
| additives are available. Air entraining agents tend to reduce
| strength. Fibers or steel pins added to the mix can improve crack
| resistance.
|
| Batch plants will design mixes so some water can be added on site
| to improve workability. If you don't add water, the concrete will
| likely exceed spec.
|
| A slump test is only one factor if many that impact concrete
| strength.
| hedayet wrote:
| Only (April) fools would trust Facebook's technology with
| anything as safety critical as construction work.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| Meta spends a ton of money on concrete, a 1M sqft data center
| with a 6" slab has one yard of concrete for every 54 sqft of
| floor, which is around 18,500 cubic yards of concrete.
|
| Any improvements to concrete mixes will benefit them.
| largbae wrote:
| I love this concept but the introduction is very odd. It feels
| like the first, third and 4th paragraphs make the same point (1/4
| of cement is imported). It gets better as it gets technical.
| taurusnoises wrote:
| If it reduces the cost of concrete (which has been going crazy in
| NYS), have at it. If it's just another clever bot trick, save it.
| Hasz wrote:
| man, I fucking love concrete. So cool. If you like concrete,
| check out [Tyler Ley's youtube
| channel](https://www.youtube.com/@TylerLey/videos). Anyways, I am
| curious why Meta is investing in this. They use a lot of concrete
| no doubt, but it's nothing compared to a highway, all the
| commercial builds, etc. I would have expected them to release
| something like a very general materials optimization framework to
| explore a space, but glad to see it applied specifically to
| concrete.
|
| There are a lot of alternative cements to portland, interested to
| see if that is in-scope. The list of admixtures is also very long
| and also fairly secretive. UHPC is a pretty cool development, and
| I am especially bullish about removing rebar and replacing it
| with FRP bar to limit the eventual rust cracking that comes with
| the gradual march of carbonation.
|
| Anyways, very cool and looking forward to the mix developments
| that come out of this framework.
| anarticle wrote:
| This also feels like "we're about to build a bunch of datacenters
| and we cannot meaningfully verify the quality of the concrete at
| our sites." This enables them to monitor the variables and
| probably not pay if it's out of spec would be my guess.
|
| In my concrete mixer experience that's just one part of the
| process, lot of other crap goes wrong, forms, vibing, water,
| additives. I'm not pouring foundations, so my xp is only to say
| there's a lot going on. Guess it's a first step?
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