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The Design of Timber Trusses in Italy: From Empiricism to Structural Analysis

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A Bridge between Conceptual Frameworks

Part of the book series: History of Mechanism and Machine Science ((HMMS,volume 27))

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Abstract

Until the mid-nineteenth century timber trusses were empirically designed thanks to centuries-old experience. Since the early nineteenth century the theory of statically-determinate trusses had been elaborated for the analysis of metal trusses, but this could not be used for timber trusses, because loads were not applied in joints, a hypothesis required to ignore static indeterminacy. In the late 1850s a specific analysis method was developed for timber trusses: it considered rafters as continuous beams on rigid supports, thus it did not satisfy constitutive and strain-displacement equations. However, theoretical developments of the 1870s allowed the exact calculation of statically-indeterminate structures, thus engineers often continued to resort to empiricism, or simplified methods.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Clapeyron’s new approach to the analysis of continuous beams was elaborated in connection to his project for the railway bridge over the Seine in Asnières near Paris built in 1849, but it was first published only in 1855 by Henri Bertot. A detailed description of the events that led to the formulation and publishing of the method of the three moments can be found in Timoshenko (1953, pp. 144–146).

  2. 2.

    The reasons for this must be sought in the severe weakness of the Italian iron industry. In 1863 the production of cast-iron in most industrialised countries was much higher than in Italy: English production was 123 times higher, and French production was 35 times higher than the Italian (Degli Esposti 2004, p. 324).

  3. 3.

    Although in his essay Sachero directly referred to Bresse’s handbook, in the analysis of a continuous beam he resorted to the most laborious differential equation of the elastic line rather than to the three moments equation.

  4. 4.

    Caveglia 1878, p. 120.

  5. 5.

    Benvenuto 1981, pp. 781–782.

  6. 6.

    Menabrea 1858, p. 1056.

  7. 7.

    An early discussion on the theories for the calculation of secondary stresses was done by Grimm (1908). Kurrer (2008, pp. 587–589) also explains how these theories finally led to formulation of the displacement method.

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  1. Department of Civil Engineering and Architecture, University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy

    Emanuele Zamperini

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  1. Emanuele Zamperini
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Correspondence to Emanuele Zamperini .

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  1. Department of Physics, Lille 1 University Science and Technology, Villeneuve d’Ascq, France

    Raffaele Pisano

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Zamperini, E. (2015). The Design of Timber Trusses in Italy: From Empiricism to Structural Analysis. In: Pisano, R. (eds) A Bridge between Conceptual Frameworks. History of Mechanism and Machine Science, vol 27. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9645-3_27

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9645-3_27

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