| Abstract: | Assessment of existing natural stone arch bridges. Arch bridges made of natural stone masonry rank among the oldest structures still in full function within road and railways. With a age from partly far over 100 years these represent historically very valuable built volumes in large number of several thousand buildings at the same time. The oldest existing bridges based on empirical values design, later there were graphic procedures for structural design, one developed approximation formulas on basis of the arch line of thrust for the draft of substantial geometry parameters such as span, type of arch as well as arch thickness at the crown and springing. In the course of the revision of these buildings evaluations regarding load‐carrying capacity and serviceability on the basis are demanded under today valid loads and standards. In this paper apart from a short overview to the existing arch bridges the possibilities of the structural modelling are discussed. An emphasis forms the computation of the masonry load‐carrying capacity, which is described in particular by safety considerations. The procedures referred to the bridge construction are transferable in principle to other structures of building construction. |
