Hi Joel,

This is well trodden path with lots of emmotive discussion having taken place over the years on how exactly hammer beam roofs behave.

They can be quite long lived with Westminster hall roof now over 619 years old and Pilgrims hall in Winchester nearly a century earlier.

Ed Levin wrote quite a bit about the structural performance of these roofs published in Timber Framing as did William Harvey in the Modern Carpenter & Joiner (1920's) where he explains about building "unconnected" block models of Westminster Hall roof. Lyn Courtney and Robert Marks published some papers in Timber Framing and elsewhere plus Yun Shen Huang (one of Mark's students at Princeton) did his thesis modelling the behaviour of a Westminster Hall Truss. It's really worth while checking out "Timber as a Structural Material" edited by David Yeomans published by Ashton which includes a compendium on the structural performance of Westminster Hall roof. It's worth also checking out the drawings made by Deneux and Ostendorf and even earlier ones by Viollet-le-Duc. Recent publication on European Roofs by Patrick Hoffsummer include details on continental Hammer beam roofs. Raphael & Arthur Brandon published a book on Timber Roofs in late Victorian times on East Anglian church roofs many of which are of hammer beam construction.

The modern day plane frame analysis programmes should provide you with the answers that you need but as allways the challenge is to know how the various joints behave e.g pin, spring, moment connection and little practical experimental outcomes are published in this respect so that this could be an area worthy of focus in your thesis.

Don't be tempted overlook the small hammer beam roofs tucked away in non descript places like No 21, The Causeway, Steventon in Olde Berkshire plus Imberhorne Cottages in East Sussex.

Take care not to publish your thesis until after it has been marked as all thesis require to be original unpublished work.

Check your PM's.

Ken Hume