Masonry Arch Bridges


This background document contains the basic and full information summarized in chapter 8 of the Guideline SB-Resist (2007): “Guideline for load and resistance assessment of railway bridges”, with reference to the assessment of masonry arch bridges.






Recent survey carried out by WP2 showed that 40% of existing rail network bridges in Europe are masonry arches. More than 60% of those bridges are over 100 years old and still carry ever increasing levels of loading and increasing volumes of traffic. Due to the constantly increasing weight of rail traffic there is increasing demand for better understanding of their life expectancy and fatigue limits. It is imperative that the bridge stock is not adversely affected by these changes in the loading regime and that appropriate assessment, modelling, repair and strengthening techniques are available.


Over the past 10 years there has been an extensive programme of research which considered some aspects of masonry arch behaviour. A number of small and large scale tests have been carried out on masonry arches, most of them have been under static (monotonic) loading and considered mainly the arch ring itself. There has been also very little work done on investigating the long-term effect of traffic (cyclic) loading

and the effect of deteriorated masonry on the fatigue life of the bridge.


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