FINITE-ELEMENT ANALYSIS OF MASONRY ARCH BRIDGES USING TAPERED ELEMENTS

In this paper, the development of a tapered beam element model is discussed and used to simulate the behaviour of a masonry arch bridge under loading. The collapse solution recognizes the inability of the arch material to carry tension, and the effective arch ring is modified as cracks develop. At each load increment, an iterative method is adopted to predict the displacement configuration which satisfies equilibrium. The model is simple and the analysis shows good convergence characteristics. Some numerical results are compared with masonry arch load tests and show that a reasonable accuracy can be achieved.