TY - JOUR
T1 - A digital tool to design structurally feasible semi-circular masonry arches composed of interlocking blocks
AU - Casapulla, C.
AU - Mousavian, E.
AU - Zarghani, M.
N1 - Funding Information:
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Grant Agreement No. 791235 . It reflects only the authors’ view and the Agency is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 Elsevier Ltd
PY - 2019/6/4
Y1 - 2019/6/4
N2 - This work deals with a digital tool to design stable semi-circular masonry arches composed of interlocking blocks which are kept together by interlocking connectors on their faces. These blocks, comparing to conventional blocks, increase the sliding resistance and reduce the workmanship. However, current digital tools were developed mostly to design arches with conventional blocks. The proposed tool tries to fill this gap by addressing the work in three stages. First, a heuristic method is developed to define the relationships between the geometry of an interlocking face and the sliding resistance. Then, a structural analysis procedure is developed based on limit analysis and a heuristic method to define the stability condition of the arch. Finally, optimization algorithms are developed to find the thinnest arch by means of two minimization strategies dealing with the relationship between the sliding resistance of the blocks and the geometry of the interlocking faces, differently. The algorithms consider some control points on a given thrust line and automatically adjust them to minimize the thickness, while the stability condition checks the structural feasibility during the geometry adjustment. To evaluate the accuracy of the proposed heuristic method, the results obtained with FE analysis are used for comparison.
AB - This work deals with a digital tool to design stable semi-circular masonry arches composed of interlocking blocks which are kept together by interlocking connectors on their faces. These blocks, comparing to conventional blocks, increase the sliding resistance and reduce the workmanship. However, current digital tools were developed mostly to design arches with conventional blocks. The proposed tool tries to fill this gap by addressing the work in three stages. First, a heuristic method is developed to define the relationships between the geometry of an interlocking face and the sliding resistance. Then, a structural analysis procedure is developed based on limit analysis and a heuristic method to define the stability condition of the arch. Finally, optimization algorithms are developed to find the thinnest arch by means of two minimization strategies dealing with the relationship between the sliding resistance of the blocks and the geometry of the interlocking faces, differently. The algorithms consider some control points on a given thrust line and automatically adjust them to minimize the thickness, while the stability condition checks the structural feasibility during the geometry adjustment. To evaluate the accuracy of the proposed heuristic method, the results obtained with FE analysis are used for comparison.
KW - Digitally supported design
KW - Interlocking blocks
KW - Limit analysis
KW - Non-isotropic sliding resistances
KW - Structurally informed architectural design
KW - Thrust line
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85066450798&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.compstruc.2019.05.001
DO - 10.1016/j.compstruc.2019.05.001
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85066450798
SN - 0045-7949
VL - 221
SP - 111
EP - 126
JO - Computers and Structures
JF - Computers and Structures
ER -