Seems like they would be better for areas with earthquakes, hurricanes, and high wind while also being more durable in general.
In: Engineering
Arches can be good if you don’t care about the depth required for a structure to work.
Look at all the buildings you see where there are arches as the primary structural system – the floor to floor heights are **enormous**. This is because you need a huge depth of structure to work, especially around the perimeter.
Once we developed structural durable materials capable of taking tension (ie steel) we moved to structural systems that are much more efficient, and require a much shallower structure. Instead of a 20 foot tall arch you can have a two foot steel beam system. This enables high rise construction.
Masonry arches, the type of arch you see in buildings, are also very very heavy compared to structural systems we use today – so for multiple floors require enormous foundation systems.
They’re also not great in earthquakes – the enormous mass means they pick up enormous earthquake forces, but aren’t very ductile so have bad failure modes when trying to dissipate those forces.
The cases where you do still see them are things like bridges where the height of the structure isn’t often a critical concern, and in these cases can be efficient structures.
Latest Answers