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

Renaissance carpentry developed and adopted a unique composite beam technology which must be seen in the perspective of fifteenth century building 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 (and in some cases, the span could be quite considerable). The resulting composite beam featured an arch-like internal mechanical behaviour, which considerably reduced the inflection of the beam. The use of the composite beam on Renaissance building sites dates back to the beginning of the fifteenth century. It allowed for a considerable reduction in the required quantity of wood because the section and length of the original tree trunks no longer needed to be considered