Experimental characterization of the mechanical behaviour of components and materials of stone masonry railway bridges

Abstract This article focuses on the experimental characterization of constituent materials of stone masonry railway bridges. The study refers to two railway bridges, an overpass in Durraes (near Barcelos, Portugal) and a culvert in Sao Pedro da Torre (next to the north border Portugal-Spain), both included in the Portuguese railway network. The experimental campaign comprised core sampling and in situ tests using several techniques, namely Dynamic Probing Super Heavy (DPSH), georadar, Menard pressuremeter (PMT) and flat-jacks, as well as lab tests on constituent materials’ samples taken from the studied bridges. The main objective of this work is therefore to use these experimental results for calibrating numerical models for structural behaviour simulation of the two bridge cases.