ABSTRACT: With the widespread use of reinforced concrete (RC) constructions in the latter decades of the
19th century in the main countries of Europe, a number of studies have been performed with a view to evaluating
the stress conditions in the structures built with this new material in mathematical terms. This paper deals with
part of a research program, one of the purposes of which was to identify any impressions emerging from
preliminary studies and investigations and having to do with current theories on RC or, in other words, to verify
whether there is any historical continuity between the hypotheses lying behind the early theoretical formulations
and our understanding of today. The various calculation methods for bending in singly reinforced slabs and
rectangular beams available from the scientific and technical literature around the turn of the century, presented
in the companion paper, are here numerically compared, to investigate whether and to what degree these veri-
fication and/or design methods are still reliable. The endpoint of the study was thus to provide an operator
planning rehabilitation or restoration work with more efficient tools to facilitate a better philological interpretation
of the structural behavior of historical RC structures.6047
INTRODUCTION
The idea of strengthening low tensile resistance materials
with iron is not so recent. It was applied in several structures
of the past. In Greece, 2000-year-old structures have been
found that show that builders knew something about the re-
inforcing of stonework for added strength (Kiesby et al. 1956).
For reinforced concrete (RC), however, generally the credit for
making its first practical use belongs to Joseph Monier, even
if other examples of RC structures had been presented a few
years earlier, such as the small boat of 1854 exhibited by Lam-
bot at the Paris Exposition of 1855, the pioneering RC beams
of Thaddeus Hyatt in the United States in the 1850s, and the
various applications of RC described by Francois Coignet
(1861) (Wang and Salmon 1978).
The main merit of Monier is that he recognized many of
the potential uses of RC and undertook to expand the appli-
cation of the new method (Straub 1952). He acquired his first
French patent in 1867 for iron RC tubs, and later for pipes
and tanks (1868), flat plates (1869), bridges (1873), and stair-
ways (1875). Monier’s iron reinforcement was mainly made
to conform to the contour of the structural element and to
strengthen it. He apparently had no quantitative knowledge
regarding the behavior of RC elements or any method of mak-
ing design calculations (Straub 1952).
As stated, in the companion paper (Gori 1999), throughout
the entire period 1850–1900, relatively little was published,
as the engineers working in the RC field considered construc-
tion and computational methods as trade secrets. By the turn
of the century there was a multiplicity of systems and methods
with little uniformity in design procedures, allowable stresses,
and systems of reinforcing.
Since the Monier German patents were sold to G. A. Wayss
and Co. in 1880, several tests of structural strength were car-
ried out by German engineers during the 1880s. Theories and
computational methods were published by Koenen in 1886 in
the journal Centralblatt der Bauverwaltung, and a year later
the test results of Wayss (1887) were published.
1
Asst. Prof. of Struct. Engrg., Dipartimento di Costruzioni e Trasporti,
Universita ` di Padova, Via Marzolo 9, 35131, Padua, Italy.
Note. Discussion open until October 1, 1999. Separate discussions
should be submitted for the inpidual papers in this symposium. To
extend the closing date one month, a written request must be filed with 钢筋混凝土梁性能评价英文文献和翻译:http://www.youerw.com/fanyi/lunwen_3381.html