A first approach to the load path method on masonry structure behaviour

Since ancient times, architects have made use of models to create ideas and to have a concrete object to work with. Only after Galilei did this custom enter into the heritage of Science and then models become also instruments to simulate and to analyse the structural behaviour. Drawing inspiration from the truss model that dates back itself to the birth of r.c. at the end of the nineteenth century (Hennebique, Ritter and Morsch), the Strut and Tie Model (STM) was recently proposed by the Stuttgart School in a wide application to r.c. structures. In the meantime interest grew in methods to generate the STM, as LPM (Load Path Method: Schlaich, 1996). The systematic and organic use of LPM (A.Vitone, Palmisano et al., 2002) is especially useful to give frames the physical significance of load paths, offering the possibility of immediately evaluating the link between form and statics (Heyman [6]), geometrical dimension and intensity of strain and of controlling the output of numerical automated analysis with finite elements (FEM). These models bring back structural analysis to the study of compression and tension flows and seem to be particularly suitable to masonry structures that, because of their constructive and geometrical characteristics, avoid the simplifying hypothesis at the origin of the Technical Theory of Beams. This study tries to propose itself as a preliminary contribution to LPM application to masonry structures. In geometrical contours and in some physical aspects it is possible to recognise the trace of loads flowing: from interrupted and deserted paths to different explorations of alternative routes in a dynamic study of static equilibrium moments in which the history and then the life of structure identify themselves.