Author(s)

R. Capozucca & D. Gerboni

Abstract

Masonry vault behaviour is described by an analysis of a masonry vault model in scale 1:4 which reproduces a real vault of a XIX^ century building. We used a non linear F.E.M. to evaluate the stress evolution of structure during load phases up to failure. In this paper we present the analysis of a vault model subjected to some load conditions describing the stress strain paths, the cracking phase and failure mechanism. Preliminary experimental tests on the model are used to define the effective masonry constitutive diagrams. The control of numerical results is done by an experimental analysis of the model. 1 Introduction The basic concept of the calculus of masonry arches and vaults is given from the fact that the collapse of these structures is an essentially geometric problem

Keywords