High Technology and Structural Insight in the Wooden Composite Beams of the Renaissance Architecture in Ferrara

Reinaissance carpentry developed and adopted a unique composite beam technology wich must be seen in the perspective of the 15th century buildings trends, aimed at identifying innovative and advanced answers to the new construction requirements of the time, where traditional techniques proved to be unsuitable. The technique adopted consisted in the assembly of timbers whose size was shorter than the span to cover. The resulted composite beam featured an archlike internal mechanical behaviour, wich considerably reduced the inflection of the beam.