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Engineering significance of marble, granite, sandstone

Short answer

Marble is a decorative stone that takes a high polish, used for flooring, cladding, and monuments, but is soluble in acids, making it unsuitable for polluted outdoor areas. Granite is very strong and durable, used for foundations, bridge piers, dam facing, aggregate, and polished slabs. Sandstone serves as a building and paving stone; its strength and permeability depend on the cementing material.

Describe the civil engineering significance of marble, granite and sandstone.

Marble

  • Used as a decorative stone for flooring, cladding, steps, columns and monuments because it takes a fine polish.
  • Soft and easy to cut and carve, so it is cheap to dress; crushed marble is used in terrazzo and as aggregate.
  • Reacts with acid and acid rain, so it is unsuitable outside in polluted areas; a calcite-rich marble body also dissolves, giving cavities.

Granite

  • Very strong, hard and durable, so it is used for foundations, bridge piers, retaining walls, dam facing and kerb stones.
  • Crushed granite gives excellent road metal, railway ballast and concrete aggregate.
  • Resists weathering and fire up to a limit; polished slabs are used for floors and counters. Jointed granite can leak and deeply weathered granite must be removed from foundations.

Sandstone

  • Used as building and paving stone, and as aggregate; strength depends on the cement (siliceous is best).
  • Well-cemented sandstone is a good foundation rock; porous types are permeable and may leak in reservoirs.
  • Weakly cemented sandstone weathers, loses strength and is unsuitable for exposed work.

✓ Answer checked by Claude Opus 5.5 (high effort)

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