Lorenzo Allievi (November 18, 1856 – October 30, 1941) was an Italian engineer known for being one of the first to explain the

water hammer Hydraulic shock ( colloquial: water hammer; fluid hammer) is a pressure surge or wave caused when a fluid in motion is forced to stop or change direction suddenly: a momentum change. It is usually observed in a liquid but gases can also be aff ...

problem.Kaveh Hariri Asli, Faig Bakhman Ogli Naghiyev, Reza Khodaparast Haghi, Hossien Hariri Asli, Advances in Control and Automation of Water Systems, CRC Press - 2012, page 2

Biography

Allievi was born in

Milan Milan ( , , ; ) is a city in northern Italy, regional capital of Lombardy, the largest city in Italy by urban area and the List of cities in Italy, second-most-populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of nea ...

but moved with his family to

Rome Rome (Italian language, Italian and , ) is the capital city and most populated (municipality) of Italy. It is also the administrative centre of the Lazio Regions of Italy, region and of the Metropolitan City of Rome. A special named with 2, ...

in 1871. There he graduated in 1879. He worked in

Naples Naples ( ; ; ) is the Regions of Italy, regional capital of Campania and the third-largest city of Italy, after Rome and Milan, with a population of 908,082 within the city's administrative limits as of 2025, while its Metropolitan City of N ...

from 1893 to 1901 as CEO of ''Rinascimento di Napoli''. Then he came back to the Rome area and started working in the

Terni Terni ( ; ; ) is a city in the southern portion of the region of Umbria, in Central Italy. It is near the border with Lazio. The city is the capital of the province of Terni, located in the plain of the Nera (Tiber), River Nera. It is northeast ...

steel/chemical/hydroelectric industrial district. In August 1902, when maintenance was being carried out on the hydroelectrical power plant of Papigno (

), the closure of a water pipe caused its explosion and great damage to the plant. Allievi investigated the problem immediately thereafter and published his fundamental study on the

problem the same year. He continued to study this problem in the following years while still working on hydroelectric power plants and becoming vice president of the Union of Industrials (in Italy). Allievi wrote in 1895 a booklet titled Cinematica della Biella Piana (Tipografia Francesco Giannini e Figli, Naples 1895) where a completely analytical solution to mechanisms design problems is given. Lorenzo Allievi died in Rome on October 30, 1941. In 1952, 50 years after the Terni incident, a large marble plaque was erected in his memory at the front of the Galleto hydroelectric power plant which, after

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, had replaced that of Papigno.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Allievi, Lorenzo 1856 births 1941 deaths Engineers from Rome Engineers from Naples 19th-century Italian engineers 20th-century Italian engineers 19th-century Italian businesspeople 20th-century Italian businesspeople