• douglasg14b@lemmy.world
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    6 hours ago

    To be fair, that’s referring to sand used for concrete, which needs to have a rough, jagged texture. Something that is largely achieved through water-based erosion and not wind-based erosion.

      • Auli@lemmy.ca
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        30 minutes ago

        Sand is not sand there are different kinds and dessert sand is way to smooth.

      • ISurvivedThePandemic@lemmus.org
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        3 hours ago

        You can’t completely replace construction sand with desert sand but you can replace some if you also add fly-ash however this is mostly just lab studies as real life examples are extremely scarce.

        A cool thing is that you can create a type of concrete called Starcrete (https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/eng-2022-0390/html) that is 2-3 times stronger than regular concrete by mixing martian regolith and potato starch. If you lack potatoes you can also make a version of it as strong as regular concrete if you replace the starch with human blood.