ting that made the baths hot and heated other large rooms. In addition to the hypocaust, there were sometimes hollow walls to help maintain even temperatures and prevent condensation. The small pillars of stacked bricks, shown in the accompanying photo of a hypocaust at Bath, the ancient Roman Britain site, would have supported a fireproof floor that was heated by means of air circulation in the underfloor chamber with an external furnace as heat source. Ring (see references) suggests the hot gases at the top of the hypocaust below the floor would have been up to about 400 В° F, with the floor and wall surfaces about 100 В° F.
Civil engineering
o A queduct
The Romans constructed numerous aqueducts to serve any large city in their empire, as well as many small towns and industrial sites. The city of Rome had the largest concentration of aqueducts, with water being supplied by eleven aqueducts constructed over ap eriod of about 500 years. They served potable water and supplied the numerous baths and fountains in the city, as well as finally being emptied into the sewers, where the once-used gray water performed their last function in removing waste matter.
The first Roman aqueduct was the Aqua Appia, built in 312 BC during the Roman Republic. The methods of construction are described by Vitruvius in his work De Architectura written in the first century BC. His book would have been of great assistance to Frontinus, a general who was appointed in the late first century CE to administer the many aqueducts of Rome. He discovered a discrepancy between the intake and supply of water caused by illegal pipes inserted into the channels to divert the water, and reported on his efforts to improve and regulate the system to the emperor Trajan at the end of the first century AD. The report of his investigation is known as De aquaeductu. In addition to masonry aqueducts, the Romans built many more leats - channels excavated in the ground, usually with a clay lining. They could serve industrial sites such as gold mines, lead and tin mines, forges, water-mills and baths or thermae. Leats were very much more expensive than the masonry design , but all aqueducts required good surveying to ensure a regular and smooth flow of water.
o Bridges
Roman bridges, built by ancient Romans, were the first large and lasting bridges built. Roman bridges were built with stone and had the arch as its basic structure. Most utilized concrete as well; which the Romans were the first to use for bridges.
Roman bridges could be built of wood if they needed to go up quickly, but those didn't last. Roman bridges made of stone, with repairs made as needed, are still in use today. When they were built, they would have helped move armies, serving as part of the road system.
As with the vault and the dome - the Romans were the first to fully realize the potential of arches for bridge construction. p> A list of Roman bridges compiled by the engineer Colin O'Connor features 330Roman stone bridges for traffic, 34 Roman timber bridges and 54 Roman aqueduct bridges, a substantial part still standing and even used to carry vehicles. A more complete survey by the Italian scholar Vittorio Galliazzo found 931 Roman bridges, mostly of stone, in as many as 26 different countries (including former Yugoslavia; see right table). p> Roman arch bridges were usually semicircular, although a few weresegmental (such as AlconГ©tar Bridge). A segmental arch is an arch that is less than a semicircle. # "#" title = "Circular segment"> segmental arch bridge were that it allowed great amounts of flood water to pass under it, which would prevent the bridge from being swept away during floods and the bridge itself could be more lightweight. Generally, Roman bridges featured wedge-shaped primary arch stones (voussoirs) of the same in size and shape. The Romans built both single spans and lengthy multiple arch aqueducts, such as the Pont du Gard andSegovia Aqueduct. Their bridges featured from an early time onwards flood openings in the piers, eg in the Pons Fabricius in Rome (62 BC), one of the world's oldest major bridges still standing.
Roman engineers were the first and until the industrial revolution the only ones to construct bridges with concrete, which they called Opus caementicium. The outside was usually covered with brick or ashlar, as in the AlcГЎntara bridge.
The Romans also introduced segmental arch bridges into bridge construction. The 330 m long Limyra Bridge in southwestern Turkey features 26 segmental arches with an average span-to-rise ratio of 5.3:1, giving the bridge an unusually flat profile unsurpassed for more than a millennium. Trajan's bridge over the Danube featured open-spandrel segmental arches made of wood (standing on 40 m high concrete piers). This was to...
