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buildings Ð has been at man's service since the beginning of
civilisation evolution. These buildings are dwelling as well
as public buildings, industrial buildings, bridges, viaducts,
tunnels, roads and railways, highways and airports, liquid
reservoirs and loose-material containers, weirs, dams, offshore
structures, TV towers, and a lot of other structures that
form the environment that we live in.
Human activity in the ®eld of civil engineering goes far
back into the past, when man observing nature around him
began to imitate and to improve it in order to create safer and
better living conditions. Moreover, relatively early he
noticed that his engineering ``works'' apart from reliability,
durability and functionality had to have elements of harmony
and beauty. The same opinion was expressed by
Socrates when he said that everything created by man should
be functional, durable and beautiful.
The development of civil engineering in the course of
centuries meant a constant struggle with available materials,
spans, or height, active loads and the forces of nature Ð
water, ®re, wind and earthquakes. Some of those elements
have primary and the other secondary signi®cance. Amongst
those mentioned ®rst, an essential role has always been
attributed to the in¯uence of the material on construction
development.
First of all, ancient communities had at their disposal
natural materials such as stone and timber. In the course of
time, they learned how to use clay to form bricks, an
arti®cial stones, which were ®rst dried only in the sun
and then baked. In the main civilisation centres (the Middle
East, the Near East, and the Mediterranean region) the hot
climate and inconsiderate economy led, in a short time, to
the elimination of timber as a building material. It did
not happen in the wood-abounding countries of Middle
and Eastern Europe, Scandinavian and the Asiatic part of
Russia.