Robert Mailart is one of the famous Civil Engineer and Structural Engineer in the history. He is specially known for his aesthetic and structurally stable arch bridges.

Today, I tried to apply his concepts in FEM using FreeCAD. I modeled a simple concrete structure with total space of 6m x 3m x 3m.

The very first specimen consisted of 4 columns (300 mm x 200 mm), 4 tie beams (150 mm x 150 mm), 4 beams (200 mm x 200mm) and 1 slab (150 mm) with area load of 50 kN. The max. abs diplacement achieved in this case was around 2.08 mm.

2. In the second case, I removed all the beams and tie beams, and inserted two arch beams (200 mm x 300 mm) touching the slab bottom. This time the max. abs diplacement in the result was of 1.43 mm with the same area load.

3. In the third case, I inserted four walls (100 mm) between the slab and arch beam. Now, the max. abs diplacement reduced to 0.47 mm, keeping the area load same.

So, one can clearly conclude from the above results that how inserting the arches can significantly reduce the displacements. Also, the amount of material gets reduced to a large extent. On the aesthetic point of view, the beauty of the structure increases effectively.