Solving statically indeterminate systems

Abstract

The most important event for the history of structural engineering in Italy in the second half of the 1800s was the approval of the law decree of 1859 of the Kingdom of Sardinia, known after its promoter Gabrio Casati, which took force from 1860 in the kingdom and was then extended to all Italy. This decree reformed the whole education system and established the schools for engineering. Among these schools, the most important one, at least at the beginning, was that in Turin. The key person of this school was Giovanni Curioni, heir of Menabrea, who had taught structural mechanics to the pupils of engineering schools beforeCasati’s reformation. Curioni inherited Menabrea’s researches on the way to solve redundant structures and supervised the graduation thesis that Alberto Castigliano and Valentino Cerruti presented in Turin in 1873, where the former extended Menabrea’s technique and the latter explored more traditional approaches to solve redundant trusses. In this chapter we focus on the contributions by Menabrea, Castigliano and Cerruti, trying to highlight strengths and weaknesses, and showing their connections.