Structural engineering for timber and steel-timber trusses in Italy (1800-1950)

Modern structural engineering strongly influenced a field of construction before ruled by an architectural approach characterized by empiricism and static intuition. Since the 1850s many engineers expressed the need of structural assessment in traditional trusses to optimize the use of materials. Structural analysis method for timber statically undetermined trusses were developed, but they were more complex and less exact than the one for metal trusses. The need to apply these methods led to simplify the trusses by reducing the number of members, and led to design wide roofing as a set of unconnected planar trusses, thus disregarding the spatial conception of the structure. In the first half of 20th century the spread of steel connectors for timber (screws, bolts, spiked plates) allowed new types of timber trusses made mainly of boards, that could reproduce the easier-to-analyse steel trusses schemes due to the simplicity of the joints and to the slenderness of members. © 2013 Taylor & Francis Group.