Edge-Corrugated Shells: Structural Insights About Nervi’s Conception of the Flamino Dome

The dome designed by P. L. Nervi in 1956 for the roof of the “Palazzetto Dello Sport” in Flaminio district, Rome, has a remarkable feature: the wavy shape of its edge provides relevant enhancements of its structural behaviour. Even though such structure is well-known abroad for its aesthetics, from a Structural Mechanics point of view such shape sparks interest in the optimization of shell structures. Primarily, corrugation enhances the bending stiffness at the edge providing a significant reduction of the dome thickness. Taking inspiration from Nervi’s work, this contribution deals with the mechanical analysis of edge-corrugated shells. Attention is paid to the definition of their mathematical and geometrical descriptions and to the realization of a mesh suitable to perform FE analysis. Then some insights are given about the static and dynamic behaviour of these structures. Therefore, the enhancement provided by the corrugated shape is highlighted by comparison with a non-corrugated shape. It is well known that on the shell edge the effect of bending effects must not be neglected. As a consequence, attention is given to stresses and bending moments. The other main issue that will be considered is the behaviour in the non-linear field (especially concerning instability aspects such as snap-through phenomena, the effect of imperfections, etc.). Some numerical simulations of the improvement produced by the new shape are shown with different methods.