SENSITIVITY ANALYSIS OF INPUT PARAMETERS FOR LOAD CARRYING CAPACITY OF MASONRY ARCH BRIDGES

Abstract

The article deals with an analysis of railway masonry arch bridges. Typical attributes of these bridges are pointing loss and backfill. Therefore, the material - masonry - behaviour can be described only by a non-linear stress-strain diagram, mainly because of low or no tensile strength. The load carrying capacity, which is one of the main parameters when assessing the bridge, is a non-linear problem with many inputs, such as properties of backfill and masonry, backfill depth and geometry of the arch. Some of these parameters can be obtained by a diagnostic survey or from archival documentation. Some of these parameters impact the calculation greatly and some negligibly. The identification of key parameters, which must be stated by the diagnostic survey, is the goal of this article.

Keywords

• non-linearity, masonry, arch bridge, load carrying capacity