Milankovitch’s Theorie der Druckkurven: Good mechanics for masonry architecture

Abstract

During the nineteenth century many studies on the theory of the thrust line were written in connection with the stability of masonry structures. However, a general treatment of the theory of the thrust line from both a mechanical and mathematical point of view may be found only in the contributions of the Serbian scholar Milutin Milankovitch, published between 1904 and 1910 and substantially unknown to the historians of mechanics applied to architecture. This paper aims at presenting Milankovitch’s theory and discussing its improvements with respect to the previous literature on the subject.