Structural behaviour of earthen corbelled domes in the Aleppo’s region

The paper illustrates the results of a study aimed at understanding the structural behaviour of earthen corbelled domes, used as roofs in several villages in the Aleppo’s region. The materials and the shape of the domes suggested the hypothesis of a “monolithic” structural behaviour, justified by the very good bond between earthen bricks and earthen mortar, and by the use of very low values of thickness, which would have otherwise lead to collapse during the construction. Thanks to this hypothesis, although the dome is built with corbelled layers (“false dome”), the membrane theory can be applied to analyze the stresses in the domes under investigation. The results of this analysis, that were compared also to those obtained by a finite element analysis with shell elements, show that the dome is subjected to biaxial compression only; moreover, the dome shape seems close to the funicular surface due to its own weight, i.e. a dome shape is the optimal geometrical choice for that material.