How did the arch lead to barrel vault and the groin vault?
The barrel vault is the simplest form of a vault: effectively a series of arches placed side by side (i.e., one after another). The third and most elegant mechanism to resist the lateral thrust was to create an intersection of two barrel vaults at right angles, thus forming a groin vault.
What is the difference between a vault and an arch?
The distinction between the two is that a vault is essentially an arch which is extruded into the third dimension, whereas a dome is an arch revolved around its vertical axis.
What Roman building uses both barrel and groin vaulting systems?
Vaulting enabled the Romans to build such spectacular structures as the Pantheon and the Colosseum, which are both in Rome. To reduce the weight of the building materials, recessed panels, called coffers, were used in construction.
What is the purpose of groin vault?
In comparison with a barrel vault, a groin vault provides good economies of material and labor. The thrust is concentrated along the groins or arrises (the four diagonal edges formed along the points where the barrel vaults intersect), so the vault need only be abutted at its four corners.
What was the benefit of the groin vault?
The main advantage of the groin vault is that it takes all the weight of the roof and concentrates it on just four points at the corners of each bay (each X).
What was the groin vault made of?
A groin vault is an arched structure normally made of brick or stone that’s designed to support a ceiling or covering of a room. To make a groin vault, builders create two barrel vaults, shaped like a half circle (or top of a barrel), and cross them in the middle at a perpendicular or right angle to form an X.
How many types of vaults are there?
Four common types of vault. A barrel vault (also called a cradle vault, tunnel vault, or wagon vault) has a semicircular cross section. A groin (or cross) vault is formed by the perpendicular intersection of two barrel vaults.
What is the groin vault made of?
barrel vaults
A groin vault is an arched structure normally made of brick or stone that’s designed to support a ceiling or covering of a room. To make a groin vault, builders create two barrel vaults, shaped like a half circle (or top of a barrel), and cross them in the middle at a perpendicular or right angle to form an X.
What kind of arch is a barrel vault?
A tunnel vault, or barrel vault, is a tunnel-like, semi-cylindrical extension of an arch, which may be thought of as an unbroken series of arches pressed together, one behind the other.
Where did the barrel vault in church come from?
Further west, in Europe, architects used much bigger barrel vaults to cover Romanesque churches and cathedrals. This Romanesque barrel vault is from a big church in Toulouse, in the south of France, about 1100 AD. By the late 1100s AD, however, most architects in Europe were using a more complicated kind of stone roof called a groin vault.
Why are barrel vaults important in the home?
♦ Eventually, a new type of vault was created, intersecting two barrel vaults at right angles, thus, negating the generation of the lateral stress. This type of vault is popularly known as groin vault. ♦ The flexibility in barrel construction is the main advantage of this vault ceiling, over other types of decorative ceilings.
What’s the difference between barrel vault and groin vault?
A barrel vault is the simplest type of ceiling vault, and a groin vault is the result of two intersecting barrels. So, they share some structural components. That’s about where their similarities end. If you look at them side-by-side, you wouldn’t guess that they have much in common at all.