Influence of geometry on seismic capacity of circular buttressed arches

The effect of geometry on the seismic capacity of masonry buttressed arches with circular shape is addressed in this paper. In particular, in the contest of the limit analysis approach for masonry structures, a numerical procedure developed by the authors in previous studies is here used to perform an extensive parametric analysis of 320 circular buttressed arches, obtained by varying the geometrical configuration, namely the angle of embrace, the arch thickness and the buttress aspect ratio. The aim of the parametric analysis is studying the effect of both arch configuration (angle of embrace and arch thickness) and buttress geometry (height and width) on the horizontal strength of buttressed arches. To this end, the results of this study are presented in terms of collapse multiplier and failure mechanism aimed to provide reference values to be used for straightforward assessment of the horizontal strength of arched masonry structures, and for checking the results of more complex structural analyses performed by using "advanced" structural engineering software.