Masonry Structures Between Mechanics And Architecture

The book aims to provide an overview of the state of the art on the mechanics of arches and masonry structures. It is addressed to an international audience, arising from the international context in which the Associazione Edoardo Benvenuto has carried out its activities in recent years, under the honorary presidency of Jacques Heyman. The book belongs to the collection Between Mechanics and Architecture, born in 1995 from the collaboration of several renowned scholars, including Edoardo Benvenuto (P. Radelet-de Grave, E. Benvenuto (eds.), Entre Mécanique et Architecture / Between Mechanics and Architecture, Birkhäuser, Basel 1995).

This volume contains eight contributions on the common theme of masonry construction. The publication coincides with the retirement of Dr Jacques Heyman from his Professorship of Engineering in the University of Cambridge, and Headship of the University's Engineering Department. It is entirely appropriate to have a collection of papers in honour of Professor Heyman at this time; for he has made signal contributions to our understanding of masonry construction over the past thirty years or so. It is no exaggeration to say that he has radically changed the way in which engineers think about masonry structures, particularly in relation to the old ecclesiastical buildings and bridges. Indeed it is hard to imagine what this subject would be like today in the absence of Professor Heyman's seminal papers.

Masonry constructions are the great majority of the buildings in Europe’s historic centres and the most important monuments of its architectural heritage. Given the age of these constructions, the demand for safety assessments and restoration projects is pressing and constant; still within the broad studies in the subject it is not yet recognised, in particular within the seismic area, a unitary approach to deal with Masonry structures. This successful book contributes to clarify the issues with a rigorous approach offering a comprehensive new Statics of Masonry Constructions. This third edition has been driven by some recent developments of the research in the field, and it gives the fundamentals of Statics with an original and rigorous mathematical formulation, further in-depth inquired in this new version. With many refinements and improvements, the book investigates the static behaviour of many historic monuments, such as the Gothic Cathedrals, the Mycenaean Tholoi, the Pantheon, the Colosseum, the domes of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence and St Peter’s in Rome, as well as the Leaning Tower of Pisa. The last chapter – the 11th - regarding the behaviour of masonry buildings under seismic actions, has been modified and integrated in order to take into account the numerous recent achievements of the research in the dynamic and seismic analysis. The focal point is that there’s no dissipation of energy during the deformation of masonry structures, even if accompanied by cracks. If properly reinforced, masonry constructions have the sole resource to escape the seismic action developing the rocking without failure, under alternate seismic action. In this context, the rocking of pier walls, the main resistant components of the masonry structure, has been here thoroughly examined. Furthermore, the out of plane and the in-plane seismic strengths of masonry walls with openings has been investigated within the framework of Limit Analysis. Through an interdisciplinary approach, involving Mathematics, Engineering and Architecture, this book highlights the tight connection existing between the Statics of Masonry constructions and the principles that ruled the history of constructions, since the beginnings as far as the Seventeenth century.

The experience of people working with different perspectives in different fields of masonry modeling, from mathematics to applied engineering and practice, is brought together in this book. It presents both the theoretical background and an overview of the state-of-the-art in static and dynamic masonry modeling.

This book collected from papers presented on the 6th International Conference on Mechanics of Masonry Structures Strengthened With Composite Materials (MuRiCo6, June 26-28, 2019, Bologna, Italy). The aim of this collection is to present and review the latest achievements in modelling, testing and controlling masonry structures strengthened with composite materials. The innovative strengthening apparatus here considered consists of composites with continuous fibres (carbon, steel, basalt, aramid, glass, PBO? etc.) reinforcing polymer or inorganic matrices. The special problems regarding the strengthening of monumental historic constructions, considering appropriate techniques in the domain of architecture structural conservation, are focused in many scientific articles authored by eminent scientists.

On March 17 1989, the Civic Tower of Pavia collapsed without apparently any warning sign, killing four people. After an experimental and analytical investigation lasted nine months, the collapse cause was found in a progressive damage dating back many years and due mainly to the heavy dead load put on top of the existing medieval tower when realising a massive bell-tower in granite. Other case histories have been collected as the collapse of the St. Marco bell-tower in Venice in 1902, of the Sancta Maria Magdalena bell-tower in 1992 in Dusseldorf, the damages of the bell-tower of the Monza Cathedral and of the Torrazzo in Cremona. Later on, in 1996 the collapse of the Noto Cathedral showed that similar progressive damages can take place in pillars of churches and cathedrals. The experimental research aimed to show the reliability of this interpretation went on and it is still continuing since 1989 and it is described in the book. After a careful interpretation of the experimental results, also based on experiences from rock mechanics and concrete, the modelling of the phenomenon for massive structures as creep behaviour of masonry was implemented. The book has the scope of helping architects and engineers to deal with the continuous damage of heavy structures and, to understand the signs of the phenomenon while proposing some modelling, but also to give guidelines for the on site investigation, monitoring and repairing of the damaged structures.

MuRiCo5 Selected, peer reviewed papers from the International Conference on Mechanics of Masonry Structures Strengthened with Composites Materials (MuRiCo5), June 28-30, 2017, Bologna, Italy

Collection of selected, peer reviewed papers from the 4th International Conference on Mechanics of Masonry Structures Strengthened with Composite Materials (MuRiCO 2014), September 9-11, 2014, Ravenna, Italy. The 80 papers are grouped as follows: Chapter 1: General, Chapter 2: Masonry, Chapter 3: Materials, Chapter 4: Masonry and Composites, Chapter 5: Technical Reports