Lighter Structures Design and Check of behaviour by testing

Taller, longer and lighter structures are employed more often in new constructions to achieve new architectonical shapes of greater beauty and significance. Architectonical configurations tend to be complicated and far from the most common structural schemes, thus not allowing structural engineers to use conventional analytical models with standard load parameters. Two cases where experimental tests have been of primary importance to understand the real distribution of actions on the structure and the real global behaviour of the structure itself are herein presented.