Boscovich's contribution to the theory of domes: the expertise for the Tiburio of Milan cathedral
Authors
López Manzanares, Gema MercedesPublisher
Instituto Juan de Herrera
Date
2005Bibliographic citation
López Manzanares, Gema (2005) “Boscovich's contribution to the theory of domes: the expertise for the Tiburio of Milan cathedral”. En: Huerta, Santiago (ed.) Essays in the history of the theory of structures. In honour of Jacques Heyman. Madrid: Instituto Juan de Herrera. pp. 273-301. ISBN 84-7790-418-9
Keywords
Estructuras
Análisis límite
Arcos
Bóvedas
Cúpulas
Historia de la construcción
Fábrica
Tiburio
Milán
Catedral
Boscovich
Structures
Limit analysis
Arches
Vaults
Construction history
Masonry
Milan
Cathedral
Domes
Document type
info:eu-repo/semantics/bookPart
Version
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
Rights
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
(c) Instituto Juan de Herrera, 2005
Access rights
info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
Abstract
In 1763, Boscovich, one of the three authors of the famous Parere di tre mattematici sopra i danni della cupola di San Pietro, was in charge of studying the stability of the oval dome of the Caesarea Library in Vienna. This dome showed alarming cracks and although he did not include numerical calculations in his expertise, he made a detail study of the movements suffered by the counterparts and proposed to encircle the dome with iron rings. In this expertise he demonstrated himself as very knowledgeable about this type of constructions. Two years later, Boscovich must face up to a new problem: the construction of the spire over the dome of the Tiburio of Milan cathedral. The problem was different here than in the other expertises, so that the scholars had to predict the future behaviour of the dome charge with the weight of the spire. Once again, Boscovich made an analysis of great interest, where he included numerical calculations resulting from applying the Virtual Work principle to a collapse mechanism of the dome caused by sliding down of the keystone with the spire. Besides he stated in brightness way his theory about vaults and domes, and he got ahead of Coulomb in the calculation of the worst location of the collapse hinges. Also, P. Regi was asked for his opinion, who applied La Hires method in Bélidors version to study the stability of the dome and the piers. These contributions, in an intermediate period between the analysis of the stability of Saint Peters dome and the construction of Sainte Genevieves church or Pantheon of Paris, that also will be object of a great controversy about the stability of its piers, are of great importance to understand the development of the scientific theory of the domes that occurs along XVIII century.
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boscovich_lopez_essays_2005.pdf | 2.812Mb |
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boscovich_lopez_essays_2005.pdf | 2.812Mb |
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