Urban Masonry Infrastructures

Assessment, repair and enhancement of urban infrastructures, such as bridges and quay walls, is one of the most urgent tasks of municipalities in the Netherlands. Within the typical city centre of Dutch canal cities, these infrastructures are often made of unreinforced brick masonry. They both serve as transportation system for the city as well as they have an historical value.

To support the decision-making process regarding the maintenance of urban masonry infrastructure, the Structural Mechanics group is carrying out research in two directions:

  • Development of numerical modelling technique to assess the residual capacity of quay walls due to partial failure of the foundation and to evaluate the effectiveness of strengthening measures.
  • Development of mechanical characterisation strategy for multi-wythe masonry infrastructures based on minor-invasive testing to enable definition of complete nonlinear material properties as input for structural analyses models.

For further information please refer to the publications below:

Esposito, R., & Messali, F. (2023). Structural analyses and material characterisation for the safety assessment of masonry urban infrastructures: implementation of research findings. Report No. CM1B20-13, version 1 (5-9-2023), Delft University of Technology. https://doi.org/10.4233/uuid:3b0d922d-a276-4fb4-bee6-b3412742e10b

Li, X. & Esposito, R. (2023). A strategy for material characterisation of multi-wythe masonry Infrastructure: Preliminary study. Construction and Building Materials 408, 133600. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.conbuildmat.2023.133600

Sharma, S., Longo, M., & Messali, F. (2023). A novel tier-based numerical analysis procedure for the structural assessment of masonry quay walls under traffic loads. Frontiers in Built Environment, 9, 1194658. https://doi.org/10.3389/fbuil.2023.1194658

Li, X., Messali, F., & Esposito, R. (2023). Mechanical Characterisation of Multi-Wythe Masonry Bridge in the City of Amsterdam. In International Conference on Structural Analysis of Historical Constructions, 527-540. Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39603-8_43

Sharma, S., Longo, M., Esposito, R., & Messali, F. (2023). Structural assessment of a masonry quay wall in Amsterdam under traffic loading. In International Conference on Structural Analysis of Historical Constructions, 152-164. Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39603-8_13

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