ArchNURBS: NURBS-Based Tool for the Structural Safety Assessment of Masonry Arches in MATLAB

Abstract

A new approach toward a fully computer-aided design (CAD) integrated structural analysis of arched masonry structures is proposed and a new MATLAB-based computational tool, named ArchNURBS, is developed. It is addressed to professionals dealing with the restoration or structural rehabilitation of historical constructions, who need to assess the safety of masonry arches under assigned load distributions. By using it, they can easily produce estimates of the carrying capacity of curved masonry members, and specifically arches of arbitrary shape. A CAD environment, which is very popular among professionals, can be employed to provide a nonuniform rational B-splines (NURBS) representation of arch geometry. On the basis of this representation, it is possible to perform both an elastic isogeometric analysis and a limit analysis of the structure up to the collapse load. Moreover, the developed tool is devised for handling the presence of fiber-reinforced polymers reinforcement strips at the extrados and/or intrados. This allows for the design of properly dimensioned reinforcement and its verification according to current building codes. The entire procedure relies upon a sound theoretical background. ArchNURBS is going to be freely distributed as an open-source project (http://sourceforge.net/projects/archnurbs/)

Drift-Based Fragility Assessment of Masonry Infills

“…[5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17]). In particular, masonry has been widely employed for the construction of infill walls, which are among the commonest non-structural elements, used for exterior closures as well as interior partitions within both reinforced concrete (RC) and steel frame constructions.…”

Fast Kinematic Limit Analysis of FRP Reinforced Masonry Vaults Through a New Genetic Algorithm Nurbs-Based Approach

“…At first, a comparison with the experimental tests presented in [21] and later analyzed in [9,14] for the unreinforced square barrel vault is carried out. In [21] the ultimate strength of a segmental masonry arch was tested, with a clear span of 3 m, an inner radius of 2.5 m and a sagitta of 0.5 m. The arch is a one-head brick structure with depth equal to 0.10 m and width equal to 1.25 m. The test-arch had 51 layers and was built with Rijswaard soft mud bricks and 1:2:9 mortar.…”

“…The present paper proposes a new NURBS-based approach [13] for the limit analysis of masonry vaults based on an upper bound formulation also allowing for the presence of FRP reinforcements, developing an idea proposed in [14] for masonry arches. NURBS (i.e.…”

An Adaptive Procedure for the Limit Analysis of FRP Reinforced Masonry Vaults and Applications

“…Many commercial free form surface modelers, such as Rhinoceros ® (McNeel, 2008), utilize NURBS representation and its properties to generate and manipulate surfaces in the threedimensional space. In the numerical simulations contained in Section 3, both vault mid-surfaces and FRP strips have been modeled within Rhinoceros as NURBS surfaces and the resulting NURBS structure have been imported within a MATLAB ® environment through the Initial Graphics Exchange Specification (IGES) standard (USPRO, 1996) following an idea proposed by some of the authors in (Chiozzi et al, 2015) for masonry arches.…”