Review of Lightweight Structures Use for Archaeological Shelters with a Proposal of the Design Improvement for Their Foundations

Archeological sites are places of big importance for preserving history and culture (Iuorio 2016). However, because of their dimensions, their preservation is a challenging task. This paper aims to give a short overview of current requirements and how they are solved and identify the design points which can be improved further. One of them, which is in the focus of this paper is the issue of the foundations for lightweight structures in archeological use. The problem emerges because at the same time foundations need to be massive and able to resist uplift forces occurring in the lightweight structure while being limited by the archeological site importance which requires the least possible invasiveness to the soil (Zanelli 2013). Presented requirements are similar to the general requirements used in the design of lightweight structures: minimizing the size and the weight of the elements by isolating principal forces and loads and shaping the elements to respond to them. In this case, the observed forces and loads are at the foundation of the structure (Fig. 1). The new foundations’ system is initially developed through virtual simulation that allows understanding the load directions and transfer of forces and also guides the design process. In the successive step, a series of form optimizations then leads to the improved design. Thanks to the virtual data collected through the simulations, it is possible to perform this data driven approach. In the end, these are tested and verified in the Politecnico di Milano wind tunnel, so the real-world data is collected and compared to the virtual one.