Assessing geometrically the structural safety of masonry arches

The Matlab code of the method based on the Full Range Factor for assessing the safety of masonry arches

“…Such a factor, denoted as “geometrical factor of safety”, was defined as the ratio between the actual thickness of the arch and the thickness of the minimal arch within the profile of the real one, obtained by scaling its thickness to enclose the thrust line. Thenceforth, the scientific community has shared the Heymanian school of thinking and his theory has been used to assess the safety of masonry arches and vaults in the context of limit or incremental analysis [[2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9], [10], [11], [12], [13], [14], [15], [16], [17], [18], [19], [20], [21], [22], [23], [24], [25], [26], [27], [28]].…”

“…All these variants of the thrust line method can be summarized [40] by the Heymanian concept of geometric factor of safety mentioned above, hereafter referred to as the “GFS Method”. In order to overcome limitations of the Heymanian geometric factor of safety for practical use in case of irregular profiles, in [20] the domain of safety has been redesigned as the locus of admissible positions of poles in the force diagrams leading to thrust lines that lie entirely within the masonry envelope and a safety indicator has been pointed out based on the value of the maximum and minimum admissible thrusts.…”

Stability and load-bearing capacity assessment of a deformed multi-span masonry bridge using the PRD method

“…Specifically, it is attributed to Gerstner in German literature, to Méry in French literature and Moseley in English one. For more info, the reader is referred to Rondeaux et al (2018) and Kurrer (2018). Méry and Moseley were the first who correlate the thrust lines with possible collapse mechanisms.…”