Shell structure of the TWA Flight Center Building by Eero Saarinen, John F. Kennedy International Airport, New York

The Montreal Biosphère by Buckminster Fuller, 1967

Lattice Shell of the Shukhov Hyperboloid Tower. Currently under threat of demolition.

Great Court, with a lattice thin-shell roof by Buro Happold with Norman Foster, British Museum, London

Thin-shell structures are light weight constructions using shell elements. These elements are typically curved and are assembled to large structures. Typical applications are fuselages of aeroplanes, boat hulls and roof structures in some buildings.

A thin shell is defined as a shell with a thickness which is small compared to its other dimensions and in which deformations are not large compared to thickness. A primary difference between a shell structure and a plate structure is that, in the unstressed state, the shell structure has curvature as opposed to plates structures which are flat. Membrane action in a shell is primarily caused by in-plane forces (plane stress), though there may be secondary forces resulting from flexural deformations. Where a flat plate acts similar to a beam with bending and shear stresses, shells are analogous to a cable which resists loads through tensile stresses. Though the ideal thin shell must be capable of developing both tension and compression. ^[1]

Architecture[link]

List of thin shell structures

See also[link]

• Tensile and membrane structures
• Vladimir Shukhov
• Buckminster Fuller
• Eero Saarinen
• Frei Otto
• Norman Foster
• Concrete shell
• Gridshell
• Geodesic dome
• Hyperboloid structure
• Panrussian Exposition 1896
• Félix Candela
• Stretched Grid Method

References[link]

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (June 2008)

2. Bechthold, M.: Innovative Surface Structures. (2008) Taylor and Francis.

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Thin-shell structures

• Thin-shell structures
• Double thin-shells structures
• Hypar & Concrete Shells
• Lattice and grid shell structures
• Past and Future of Grid Shell Structures
• Shape optimization of Shell and Spatial structure
• Lattice Shell for Space Vehicles
• International Association for Shell and Spatial Structures
• “Vladimir G. Suchov 1853-1939. Die Kunst der sparsamen Konstruktion.”, Rainer Graefe und andere, 192 S., Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart, 1990, ISBN 3-421-02984-9.

Look up shell in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Shell may refer to:

Nature[link]

• Seashell, a hard outer layer of a marine animal, found on beaches
• Exoskeleton, an external covering of some animals
  • Mollusc shell
  • Gastropod shell
  • Turtle shell
• Eggshell

Business[link]

• Royal Dutch Shell, a multinational oil and gas company
  • Shell Oil Company, the U.S.-based subsidiary
  • Shell Canada
  • Shell Nigeria
• Shell corporation, a company which serves as a vehicle for business transactions

Entertainment[link]

• Shell (theater), a curved surface for reflecting sound
• The Shells, a musical group
• "Shells" (Angel), a TV episode

Places[link]

• Shell, Ecuador
• Shell, California, United States
• Shell, Wyoming, United States

People[link]

• Art Shell (born 1946), American football player and coach
• Donald Shell (born 1924), American computer scientist
• Karl Shell (born 1938), American economist

Weaponry[link]

• Shell (projectile), an explosive device fired from artillery
• Shotgun shell, a type of shotgun ammunition

Other uses[link]

• Shell (computing), a type of user interface
• Shell (machinery), each half of a two-piece plain bearing
• Electron shell
• Racing shell, a watercraft
• Shell account, a user account on a remote server
• Shell element, a component of the thin-shell structure construction method
• A ring-like algebraic structure

See also[link]

• Shell sort, a sorting algorithm
• On shell and off shell, a concept in quantum field theory
• All pages beginning with "Shell"
• All pages with titles containing "Shell"

This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the same title. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.

‎

Structure is a fundamental, tangible or intangible notion referring to the recognition, observation, nature, and permanence of patterns and relationships of entities. This notion may itself be an object, such as a built structure, or an attribute, such as the structure of society. From a child's verbal description of a snowflake, to the detailed scientific analysis of the properties of magnetic fields, the concept of structure is now often an essential foundation of nearly every mode of inquiry and discovery in science, philosophy, and art.^[1] In early 20th-century and earlier thought, form^{[disambiguation needed ]} often plays a role comparable to that of structure in contemporary thought. The neo-Kantianism of Ernst Cassirer (cf. his Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, completed in 1929 and published in English translation in the 1950s) is sometimes regarded as a precursor of the later shift to structuralism and poststructuralism.^[2]

The description of structure implicitly offers an account of what a system is made of: a configuration of items, a collection of inter-related components or services. A structure may be a hierarchy (a cascade of one-to-many relationships), a network featuring many-to-many links, or a lattice featuring connections between components that are neighbors in space.

Types of structure[link]

Physical structure[link]

In engineering and architecture, a structure is a body or assemblage of bodies in space to form a system capable of supporting loads. Physical structures include man-made and natural arrangements. Buildings, aircraft, soap films, skeletons, anthills, beaver dams and salt domes are all examples of physical structures. The effects of loads on physical structures are determined through structural analysis. Structural engineering refers to engineering of physical structures.

Built structures are a subset of physical structures resulting from construction. These are divided into buildings and nonbuilding structures, and make up the infrastructure of a human society. Built structures are composed of structural elements such as columns, beams and trusses. Built structures are broadly divided by their varying design approaches and standards, into categories including Building structures, Architectural structures, Civil engineering structures and Mechanical structures.

Biological structure[link]

In biology, structures exist at all levels of organization, ranging hierarchically from the atomic and molecular to the cellular, tissue, organ, organismic, population and ecosystem level. Usually, a higher-level structure is composed of multiple copies of a lower-level structure.

Chemical structure[link]

Chemistry is the science treating matter at the atomic to macromolecular scale, the reactions, transformations and aggregations of matter, as well as accompanying energy and entropy changes during these processes. The chemical structure refers to both molecular geometry and to electronic structure. The structural formula of a chemical compound is a graphical representation of the molecular structure showing how the atoms are arranged. A protein structure is the three dimensional coordinates of the atoms within (macro) molecules made of protein.

Musical composition[link]

Music is an art form consisting of sound and silence expressed through time. The term musical form, a type of structure, refers to two related concepts:

• the type of composition (for example, a musical work can have the form of a symphony, a concerto, or other generic type)
• the structure of a particular piece (for example, a piece can be written in binary form, sonata form, as a fugue, etc.)

Social structure[link]

A social structure is a pattern of relations. They are social organizations of individuals in various life situations. Structures are applicable to people in how a society is as a system organized by a characteristic pattern of relationships. This is known as the social organization of the group. Sociologists have studied the changing structure of these groups. Structure and agency are two confronted theories about human behaviour. The debate surrounding the influence of structure and agency on human thought is one of the central issues in sociology. In this context "agency" refers to the capacity of individual humans to act independently and to make their own free choices. "Structure" here refers to those factors such as social class, religion, gender, ethnicity, customs etc. which seem to limit or influence the opportunities that individuals have.

Data structure[link]

In computer science, a data structure is a way of storing data in a computer so that it can be used efficiently. Often a carefully chosen data structure will allow the most efficient algorithm to be used. The choice of the data structure often begins from the choice of an abstract data type. A well-designed data structure allows a variety of critical operations to be performed, using as few resources, both execution time and memory space, as possible. Data structures are implemented in a programming language as data types and the references (e.g. relationships, links and pointers) and operations that are possible with them. For structure tables and structure functions, see data structure.

See also[link]

• Crystal structure
• Data structure
• Mathematical structure
• Building
• Nonbuilding structure
• Structural analysis
• Structural engineering
• Structural geology
• Protein structure
• Biomolecular structure
  • Primary structure
  • Secondary structure
  • Tertiary structure
  • Quaternary structure

References[link]

Cristo Obrero Church in Atlántida, Uruguay

Eladio Dieste (Artigas department, December 10, 1917 - Montevideo, July 29, 2000) was a Uruguayan engineer and architect who made his reputation by building a range of structures from grain silos, factory sheds, markets and churches, all in Uruguay and all of exceptional elegance. A particular innovation was his Gaussian vault, a thin-shell structure for roofs in single-thickness brick, that derives its stiffness and strength from a double curvature catenary arch form that resists buckling failure.^[1]

There were several architects in South and Latin America who were working in the modernist idiom, such as Carlos Raúl Villanueva in Venezuela and Félix Candela in Mexico, but Dieste, was one of the few to bring architecture and structural engineering into close proximity, especially in the service of sometimes humble commissions. His buildings were mostly roofed with thin shell vaults constructed of brick and ceramic tiles. These forms were cheaper than reinforced concrete, and didn't require ribs and beams. In developing this approach, even in comparison with modernists the world over, he was an innovator.^[2]

Door of Wisdom, locally nicknamed 'The Gull', a sculptural tribute to Dieste at Salto, Uruguay, using his techniques

Dieste is quoted about his use of materials and structure:

There are deep moral/practical reasons for our search which give form to our work: with the form we create we can adjust to the laws of matter with all reverence, forming a dialogue with reality and its mysteries in essential communion... For architecture to be truly constructed, the materials must be used with profound respect for their essence and possibilities; only thus can 'cosmic economy' be achieved... in agreement with the profound order of the world; only then can have that authority that so astounds us in the great works of the past.^[3]

With regard to structure Dieste stated:

The resistant virtues of the structure that we make depend on their form; it is through their form that they are stable and not because of an awkward accumulation of materials. There is nothing more noble and elegant from an intellectual viewpoint than this; resistance through form.^[4]

Many of the techniques that he developed to achieve these forms, such as pre-stressing of brickwork and moveable formworks, were in advance of contemporary techniques in the developed world.

References[link]

Sources[link]

• Curtis, William (2002). Modern Architecture since 1900. Phaidon. ISBN 0-7148-3356-8. 
• Pedreschi, Remo (2000). Eladio Dieste - The Engineer's Contribution to Contemporary Architecture. Thomas Telford. ISBN 0-7277-2772-9. 
• Fausto Giovannardi "Eladio Dieste: un'ingegneria magica", Fausto Giovannardi. Borgo San Lorenzo, 2007.

External links[link]

• Article in Architecture Week

Vladimir Grigorievich Shukhov

Vladimir Grigoryevich Shukhov (Russian: Влади́мир Григо́рьевич Шу́хов; August 28 [O.S. August 16] 1853 – February 2, 1939) was a Russian engineer-polymath, scientist and architect renowned for his pioneering works on new methods of analysis for structural engineering that led to breakthroughs in industrial design of world's first hyperboloid structures,^[1] lattice shell structures,^[2] tensile structures,^[2] gridshell structures,^[2] oil reservoirs, pipelines, boilers, ships and barges.

Besides the innovations he brought to the oil industry and the construction of numerous bridges and buildings, Shukhov was the inventor of a new family of doubly curved structural forms. These forms, based on non-Euclidean hyperbolic geometry, are known today as hyperboloids of revolution. Shukhov developed not only many varieties of light-weight hyperboloid towers and roof systems, but also the mathematics for their analysis. Shukhov is particularly reputed for his original designs of hyperboloid towers such as the Shukhov Tower.

Biography[link]

Factory of Shukhov cracking process, Baku, USSR, 1932

Vladimir Shukhov was born in a town of Graivoron, Belgorod uezd, Kursk gubernia (in present-day Belgorod Oblast) into a petty noble family. His father Grigory Ivanovich Shukhov was a minor government official, promoted for his efforts in the Crimean War. For a while, Grigory served as Mayor of Graivoron and later as an administrator in Warsaw.

In 1864 Vladimir entered Saint Petersburg gymnasium from which he graduated with distinction in 1871. During his high school years he showed mathematical talents, once demonstrating to his classmates and teacher an original proof of the Pythagorean theorem. The teacher praised his skills but he failed the grade for violating the textbook's guidelines.

The world's first hyperboloid structure by Shukhov, Nizhny Novgorod, 1896

After graduating from the gymnasium, Shukhov entered the Imperial Moscow Technical School, in which his teachers included Pafnuty Chebyshev, Aleksey Letnikov, and Nikolay Zhukovsky. In 1876 Shukhov graduated from the school with distinction and a Gold Medal. Chebyshev proposed to him a job as a lecturer in mathematics at the Imperial Moscow Technical School, but Shukhov decided to seek a job in the industry instead.

Thereupon Shukhov went to Philadelphia, to work on the Russian pavilion at the World's Fair and to study the inner workings of the American industry. During his stay in the US Shukhov came to know a Russian-American entrepreneur, Alexander Veniaminovich Bari (Александр Вениаминович Бари) who also worked on the organization of the Fair.

In 1877 Shukhov returned to Russia and joined the drafting office of the Warsaw-Vienna railroad. Within several months, Shukhov's frustration with standard and routine engineering made him abandon the office and join a military-medical academy.

Shukhov Tower in Moscow. It is currently under threat of demolition, and there is an international campaign to save it.

On his coming to Russia in 1877, Bari persuaded Shukhov to give up his medical education and to assume the office of Chief Engineer in a new company specializing in innovative engineering. Shukhov worked with Bari at this company until the October Revolution. Their works revolutionized many areas of civil engineering, ship engineering, and oil industry. The thermal cracking method, the Shukhov cracking process, was patented by Vladimir Shukhov in 1891.

Shukhov always found time for a passionate hobby – photography.^[3] The photographic works of Shukhov opened new trends ahead of their flourishing of Fine art photography. He made photos in various genres: reporting, city landscape, portrait, constructivism. About two thousand photos and negatives made by Shukhov have survived until this day.

After the October Revolution Shukhov decided to stay in the Soviet Union despite having received alluring job offers from around the world. Many signal Soviet engineering projects of the 1920s were associated with his name. In 1919 he framed his slogan: We should work independently from politics. The buildings, boilers, beams would be needed and so would we. In the later 1930s during the Great Purge he retired from engineering work but was not arrested or persecuted.

Shukov died on February 2, 1939 in Moscow and was buried at the Novodevichy Cemetery. His many honours included the Lenin Prize (1929) and the title of Hero of Labour (1932).

Works[link]

Passage of Upper Trading Rows (GUM) in Moscow.

The glass roof on the Pushkin Museum, 1899-1912 — video, 2011

Vladimir Shukhov is often referred as the Russian Edison for the sheer quantity and quality of his pioneering works. He was one of the first to develop practical calculations of stresses and deformations of beams, shells and membranes on elastic foundation. These theoretical results allowed him to design the first Russian oil tanker, new types of oil tanker barges, and a new type of oil reservoirs. The same principle of the shell on an elastic foundation allowed to theoretically calculate the optimal diameter, wall thickness and fluid speed for the fluid pipelines. Shukhov's projects were instrumental in constructing:

• An oil pipeline, the first in the Russian Empire, between Balkhany and Cherny Gorod near Baku (12 km, 1878 complete, used by the Branobel). By 1883 the total length of Shukhov-designed, Bari-built oil pipelines in Baku exceeded 94 km, transporting 30,000 barrels of oil per day. In 1894, a similar pipeline network was built in Grozny. Shukhov designed the first Trans-Caucasian kerosene pipeline between Baku and Batumi (835 km long) and Grozny-Tuapse pipeline (618 km long).

• A superior design for water-mains. Shukhov designed (and Bari built) complete water-supply systems for the cities of Cherkassy, Tambov, Kharkov, Voronezh and many others. In that age of infectious diseases his water-supply systems literally saved thousands of lives.
• A superior design for oil-tanker barges (less than half of the metal previously required), 84 150-meters long barges were built (mostly for the Volga river) as well as the first Russian seaworthy oil tanker ship. His approach to the ship strength analysis (using the model of a shell on an elastic foundation) was absolutely novel for that time.
• Shukhov-designed inexpensive oil tanks with the bottom calculated as a membrane on elastic foundation. They became very popular among oil-producers of the Imperial Russia. By 1881, 130 such tanks were built in Baku alone.

Shukhov made important contributions to the chemical industry:

• He designed and built an oil cracking plant. His patents (Shukhov cracking process - patent of Russian empire No. 12926 from November 27, 1891) on cracking were used to invalidate Standard Oil's patents (Burton process – Patent of USA No. 1,049,667 on January 7, 1913) on oil refineries.

• He designed an original oil pump. Shukhov's pumps revolutionized Baku's oil industry allowing to increase its oil output.
• He designed one of the first furnaces that used the residual oil: before his works the residual oil was considered a waste and was discarded, due to his works it became recognized as an important technical product known as a fuel oil.

Shukhov also left a lasting legacy to the Constructivist architecture of early Soviet Russia. As a leading specialist of metallic structures (hyperboloid structures, thin-shell structures, tensile structures), he may be compared with Gustave Eiffel. Shukhov's innovative and exquisite constructions still grace many towns across the former Russian Empire:

• Eight thin-shell structures exhibition pavilions for the All-Russia Exhibition in Nizhny Novgorod of 1896, covering the area of 27,000 m², and featuring an unorthodox water-tower that served as a model for more than 30 similar structures built in Imperial Russia, and thousands around the world now.

The world's first double curvature steel gridshell by Shukhov (during construction), Vyksa near Nizhny Novgorod, 1897.

• About 200 original towers (hyperboloid steel gridshells) all over the world, the most famous being the 160-meter-high Shukhov Tower in Moscow (1922) and 70-meter-high Adziogol Lighthouse near Kherson (1910). On Shukhov's 110th birthday in 1963 Soviet Union issued a postal stamp showing Shukhov and his tower (pictured).
• Spacious elongated shop galleries, bridged with innovative metal-and-glass vaults, notably the Upper Trade Rows on Red Square (1889–94), Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts (1898–1912) and Petrovka Passage (1903–06).
• Enormous metal arch vaulting for the Municipal Railway Park (1908) and the Kievskiy Railway Station in Moscow (1912–17).
• The colossal hall of the Central Post Office, Moscow (1911–13).
• Truss-supported metal framework for the Central Universal Store in Moscow (1906–08).
• A rotating scene for the Moscow Art Theatre.
• Several Constructivist projects, designed in collaboration with Konstantin Melnikov, notably the Bakhmetevsky Bus Garage (1926–28) and Novo-Ryazanskaya Street Garage (1926–29).
• More than 180 bridges across the Volga, Yenisey, Dnieper, and other rivers.
• Stabilization Minaret of the Madrasah Ulugh Beg in Samarkand (Shukhov's last engineering work).

See also[link]

The World First Membrane roof and steel tensile gridshell in the Shukhov Rotunda, Nizhny Novgorod, 1895

• Shukhov cracking process
• Gridshell
• Hyperboloid structure
• Tensile and membrane structures
• Constructivist architecture
• All-Russia exhibition 1896
• History of structural engineering

Major works[link]

• Grozny-Tuapse pipeline
• Shukhov Tower
• Shukhov Rotunda
• Adziogol Lighthouse
• The world's first Hyperboloid structure
• Shukhov tower on the Oka River
• Pushkin Museum
• Moscow GUM
• Novo-Ryazanskaya Street Garage
• Bakhmetevsky Bus Garage
• Kievskiy Railway Station
• Hotel Metropol (Moscow)
• Petrovsky Passage
• Water-main in Cherkassy

References[link]

Hyperboloid Adziogol Lighthouse by V.G.Shukhov near Kherson, Ukraine, 1911

Shukhov and his tower as they appear on a 1963 Soviet postage stamp commemorating the 110th anniversary of his birth

(English)

• Shukhov and Oil Industry
• Spherical (VR) pano in the world's first hyperboloid structure
• Shukhov Tower in Moscow – video
• Vladimir Grigoryevich Shukhov information at Structurae – architectural works
• Biography of Shukhov
• Vladimir Shukhov at the archINFORM database
• Karl-Eugen Kurrer, "The History of the Theory of Structures: From Arch Analysis to Computational Mechanics", 2008, ISBN 978-3-433-01838-5
• "The Nijni-Novgorod exhibition: Water tower, room under construction, springing of 91 feet span", "The Engineer", № 19.3.1897, P.292-294, London, 1897.
• William Craft Brumfield: "The Origins of Modernism in Russian Architecture", University of California Press, 1991, ISBN 0-520-06929-3.
• Elizabeth C. English: "Invention of Hyperboloid Structures", Metropolis & Beyond, 2005.
• Elizabeth C. English: “Arkhitektura i mnimosti”: The origins of Soviet avant-garde rationalist architecture in the Russian mystical-philosophical and mathematical intellectual tradition”, a dissertation in architecture, 264 p., University of Pennsylvania, 2000.
• Valeri Fedorov: "Telecommunications grid architecture in the former Soviet Union", Global Consultants, 1992, ISBN 1-881874-07-9
• Photographic works of Shukhov

(German)

• Die sparsame Konstruktion
• Rainer Graefe, Jos Tomlow: “Vladimir G. Suchov 1853-1939. Die Kunst der sparsamen Konstruktion.”, 192 S., Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart, 1990, ISBN 3-421-02984-9.
• Jesberg, Paulgerd: "Die Geschichte der Bauingenieurkunst", Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart (Germany), ISBN 3-421-03078-2, 1996; pp. 198–9.
• Ricken, Herbert: "Der Bauingenieur", Verlag für Bauwesen, Berlin (Germany), ISBN 3-345-00266-3, 1994; pp. 230.
• Suchov und Gaudi

(French)

• Picon, Antoine (dir.): "L'art de l'ingenieur : constructeur, entrepreneur, inventeur", Éditions du Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 1997, ISBN 2-85850-911-5

(Italian)

• Fausto Giovannardi: "Vladimir G. Shukhov e la leggerezza dell’acciaio", Borgo San Lorenzo, 2007.

(Russian)

• Шухов В. Г.: Избранные труды, том 1, «Строительная механика», 192 стр., под ред. А. Ю. Ишлинского, Академия наук СССР, Москва, 1977.
• Шухов В. Г.: Избранные труды, том 2, «Гидротехника», 222 стр., под ред. А. Е. Шейндлина, Академия наук СССР, Москва, 1981.
• Шухов В. Г.: Избранные труды, том 3, «Нефтепереработка. Теплотехника», 102 стр., под ред. А. Е. Шейндлина, Академия наук СССР, Москва, 1982.
• Грефе Р. и др.: «В. Г. Шухов (1853—1939). Искусство конструкции.», «Мир», Москва, 1994, ISBN 5-03-002917-6.
• Шухова Е. М.: «Владимир Григорьевич Шухов. Первый инженер России.», 368 стр., Изд. МГТУ, Москва, 2003, ISBN 5-7038-2295-5.
• "В.Г.Шухов – выдающийся инженер и ученый", Труды Объединенной научной сессии Академии наук СССР, посвященной научному и инженерному творчеству почетного академика В.Г.Шухова. М.: Наука, 1984, 96 с.
• Петропавловская И.А.: "Владимир Григорьевич Шухов, 1853-1939", Москва, "Наука", 2004, ISBN 5-02-033173-2.
• Российский государственный архив научно-технической документации (РГАНТД): "Документальное наследие выдающегося российского инженера В.Г. Шухова в архивах" (межархивный справочник), ред. Шапошников А.С., Медведева Г.А.; 181 стр., издание РГАНТД, Москва, 2008.

Photos of Works[link]

• 

  The world's first hyperboloid structure by Vladimir Shukhov, Polibino, Lipetsk Oblast, 2009

• 

  Rotunda and rectangular pavilion, Nizhny Novgorod, 1896

• 

  Upper Trading Rows (GUM) in Moscow

• 

  Shukhov Tower Project of 350 metres, 1919

• 

  Lattice hyperboloid structure of the World's First Shukhov Tower

• 

  Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow

• 

  Shukhov towers on the Oka River, 1988

• 

  Shukhov towers on the Oka River in the suburb of Nizhniy Novgorod, 1988

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Vladimir Shukhov