21:56 Nov 18, 2009 

Thank you first of all. Your link suggetion is great and intereting
a good hint you found out by yourselves. I agree springs have to do but exact translation is a little far still. We have to wait for an engineering's post now .......... Good luck Ciao

19:40 Nov 18, 2009 

On the one hand, this site: http://www.cee.lsu.edu/people/Cai/J2000-EFFECT OF BEARING PA... (page 5) tends to support your current line of thought:
"The vertical springs were categorized as corner, edge, and
center..." but then other sites, such as: http://www.paver.it/download/cataloghi/lieeguida0409.pdf (page 3) suggest that they are just one type of reinforcement bar: "L’armatura minima di richiamo sarà composta da molloni E mm 10..."

19:29 Nov 18, 2009 

Multi-springs is cool. However according to the article they are considering only a model. That is why they present "inelastic" springs (which wouldn't make sense otherwise to an engineer); they only model the behavior of the concrete.
Based on your suggestion I did find another very interesting page:
www.mason-ind.com/masonind/private/files/pdf/ds202v2.pdf
I think for now "Springs" will probably have to do.

19:12 Nov 18, 2009 

may be the following link is of help, it just shows designs of foundation pillars and close to them there's the englih equivalent
of multi springs. Apart from this, the article is in italian.

http://www.buildup.it/Portal/index.asp?location=News§ion...

18:02 Nov 18, 2009 

The only context I have is "Molloni verticali d'angolo." as part of the analysis of the foundation pillar sleeves (bicchieri).

17:53 Nov 18, 2009 

does this refer to the shape of the steels in ' tension steel reinforced concrete'?