Italian Workshop on
Shell and Spatial Structures
Maurizio Angelillo
Dipartimento di Ingegneria Civile. Università di SalernoBiography
Maurizio Angelillo, formerly a Professor of Statics and Strength of Materials at the School of Engineering and Architecture of the “Università degli Studi di Salerno”, is an Architect and structural expert with multi-disciplinary research interests including masonry mechanics, and Biomechanics. Trained in Architecture at the University of Naples and in Mechanics at the University of Minnesota, he and his group are actively working on the kinematics and on the equilibrium of masonry buildings. Angelillo, who is the Editor and the co-author of the CISM books “Mechanics of Masonry Structures” and “Discrete Computational Mechanics of Masonry Structures”, works on unilateral models for masonry since the early 80s, being the author of more than 50 papers on the application of these models to real masonry structures and masonry elements such as arches, domes, vaults and spiral stairs. Currently is one of the organizers of the International Summer School on Historic Masonry Structures, that last year was held in Anagni (Italy) and this year will take place in Segovia (Spain) https://www.himass.org/.
Membrane Equilibrium Analysis for the assessment of traditional masonry structures and the design of new sustainable structures
Stability -in its primitive structural sense- rather than strength is actually the primary criterion, if not the sole, for masonry assessment, and the clever intuition of Jacques Heyman that Limit Analysis can still be used in this new context, is one of the turning points of the 20th century Building Mechanics. In this contribution I present a method for the stress analysis of vaults and domes, named Membrane Equilibrium No-Tension Analysis (MEA-NT), leaning on the assumptions that the material is unilateral (No-Tension), has infinite compressive strength, and cannot slide. MEA-NT is essentially a method to construct balanced and admissible stress fields, in the spirit of the safe theorem of Limit Analysis. Though I will present new material here and there, this contribution is essentially a survey presentation collecting all the building blocks that since the late nineties a group of scholars (among which I played a leading role) contributed to create in order to assemble and develop MEA-NT. There are many points of contact of MEA-NT with other more structural approaches. In this respect we have to acknowledge the visionary contribution of O’Dwyer and the parallel development of the Thrust Network Analysis of Block and Ochsendorf, an elegant method, recently taken up and extended by some Italian Scholars (among which I recall Marmo & Rosati, Bisegna & Nodargi), to approach the equilibrium of unilateral shells with some connections with MEA-NT that we will touch upon in this presentation. MEA-NT gives us clues to interpret the functioning of traditional masonry structures, and even explain the equilibrium of bold old structures whose behaviour still puzzles modern Engineers; but also MEA-NT can be used to design modern sustainable structures that adapt the old concepts behind masonry construction to the new demands of the modern era.