Interactive Software for Mapping Concentrated Displacements in Masonry Arches

Abstract

Arches are a common component of masonry structures, a lot of them belonging to important building heritages and many of them are still under service such as arch bridges. The behaviour testing and structural health monitoring of masonry arches require effective measurement methods. There have been a lot of testing methods applied regarding this subject, among which the vision-based non-destructive methods are very appealing. However, as the demands of accuracy and range increase, the labour and economic costs increase to uneconomical levels. A novel, cheap, and fast strategy focused directly on the mechanical failure of masonry arches was developed, it is based on homography and does not require a high-precision camera. In this article, a MATLAB® based graphical user interface was designed to present the huge amount of data gained through the measurement of repeated collapses of an in-scale arch subjected to springing settlement. These educational experimental cases integrated in the GUI provide the possibility to better understand the failure mechanism of dry arch under foot displacement, as well to easily identify the occurrence of mechanical joints and determine the value of deformations. This graphical user interface can be adapted for different arch configurations, as well for further real-time monitoring.

Keywords: Masonry arch, homography, cheap and fast monitoring system, MATLAB GUI