Abstract
Buttressed arches represent some of the most vulnerable elements in historical masonry buildings under seismic actions. Given their structural, architectural and often artistic importance, it is paramount to investigate effective retrofitting measures which satisfy reversibility and compatibility requirements for historical heritage. Among these, Fibre-Reinforced Mortar (FRM), characterised by enhanced ductility, has recently emerged in the scientific literature. In this paper, a numerical investigation aimed at exploring the effectiveness of this seismic retrofitting technique, when applied at intrados or extrados of various typologies of buttressed arches, is presented. An automatic tool for limit analysis is described and validated against a nonlinear Discrete Macro-Element modelling approach. This precedes an extensive parametric analysis, which has highlighted the effect of various geometrical features of the system on both collapse mechanism and maximum acceleration in the unreinforced configuration, and the high increase in seismic capacity provided by the retrofitting. This is particularly remarkable in case of local mechanism, i.e., wholly within the arch, in which case the FRM may be responsible of an overall shifting to a semi-global failure type.
Highlights
Most historical and artistical heritage in Europe and worldwide is made of unreinforced masonry (URM)
Since the seminal work of Heyman [24], limit analysis is suitable for the analysis of masonry arches and for this reason it is still widely used in research and professional communities [25,26], even in combination with more advanced methodologies [27]
The analyses were performed by means of an ad-hoc script in Gmsh software able to build the model and evaluate the plastic multiplier through the kinematic theorem of limit analysis
Summary
Most historical and artistical heritage in Europe and worldwide is made of unreinforced masonry (URM). Masonry arches and vaults represent some of the most vulnerable elements of ancient structures [1] and in the last decades a significant research effort has been devoted to their assessment and retrofitting. Some recent studies have targeted the very common configuration constituted by semicircular arches with buttresses [2,3,4], highlighting the need for further developments regarding seismic vulnerability assessment and retrofitting design of this structural typology. Parametric investigations on the seismic capacity of URM buttressed arches of different shapes are reported in [5,6], providing a comparison between different modelling methods. Studies involving experimental tests and analytical/numerical modelling of FRP-reinforced arches and their main failure modes are reported in [8,9]
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