Effect of geometry parameters on the seismic capacity of masonry arches

The preservation of existing structures is an important issue nowadays because most of these structures have been built long time ago and are now considered as our cultural heritage. Among them, historical structures as bridges made with masonry arches are important, especially in Italy, where Roman civilization was born. Today they are facing seismic action due to earthquake and most of them suffer great damages. It becomes important to assess the seismic load capacity of these structures since they were not initially designed to resist seismic loads in order to plan their strengthening. This work investigates the seismic capacity of masonry arches with irregular geometry through classical limit analysis method. In particular, two aspects of irregularity as asymmetric abutment dimensions and discontinuous arch thickness, with the aim to evaluate the collapse multiplier and position of cracking hinge are considered. At the end, parametric analysis were performed to show how the geometr...