Structural analysis using Discrete Element Method

Joo Filipe Loureno Alves

joao.f.alves@tecnico.ulisboa.pt

DECivil, Instituto Superior Tcnico, Lisbon University, Lisbon, Portugal

October 2015

Abstract
Masonry is one of the oldest construction techniques. The sustainability, durability and resistance of this
material has contributed towards the widespread use of this composite material. Therefore, nowadays there
is a great number of masonry structures, in which the arched structures have a significant role, for allowing
to overcome spans using a material with low tensile strength. Built in the XVI century, the vault of the Igreja
Matriz de Bucelas has become very deformed. Thus, this dissertation aims to study the structural safety of
the church. In the structure evaluation, static and dynamic runs using the Discrete Element Method were
made. This technique allows the usage of a non-linear behavior model and can perform the full simulation
of the structures behavior since the load is applied until the structure collapses. The last inspections done
in the church allowed to obtain important data, namely the thickness of the vault and the existence of filling
in its extrados, so one can claim that a good structure modulation was achieved. The results showed that
in the actual situation, the Church is very unstable. One reinforcement proposal was analyzed and it
increased the global strength of the structure for the static and dynamic runs.

Keywords: Masonry, Vault, Arch, Discrete Element Method, Structural Analysis

1 Introduction
The existence of old masonry structures is
widespread throughout Europe, in historical and
urban centers, in different types of structures such
as buildings, churches, towers, arches, walls,
forts, walls, etc. Throughout history, it is possible
to notice a trend of producing increasingly large
gaps and covered spaces, with a lesser degree of
obstruction on the part of the structural elements.
The main challenge is the absorption and
conduction of stresses to the ground. In the search
for answers to this challenge, there are in many of
the old structures a structural masonry arch. The
importance of the masonry arch is particularly
evident in the construction of bridges, but also in
other major structures such as the case of
churches or palaces.
Traditionally, the evaluation of masonry arches
strength has had some difficulties with its scope
restricted and where it was assumed simple
assumptions in its structural analysis.
Recently, the study of masonry structures, as well
as the masonry arch, earned a lot of interest but
now with a different goal. Although, the new
structural materials, especially concrete and steel,
1
replaced the masonry as a structural element, the
preservation of historical patrimony demands an
in-depth study of this type of structures.
With the development of informatics, especially
the computational capability in modern computers,
the structural analysis of masonry structures that
before it represented a lot of difficulties and the
acceptance of very simple hypothesis, has
become more easy and effective.
In this study it is intended to evaluate the structure
stability of an existent masonry structure, and to
analyze a solution of reinforcement to be applied
to this structure in a state of instability, resorting to
the discrete element method and other
computational tools.
Nomenclature
UDEC Universal Distinct Element Code
Three Dimensional Distinct
3DEC
Element Code
 1833) and France (Mry, 1840) the concept of line
of thrust. According to Mry, the beginning of the
2 Masonry Structures collapse mechanism happened when the thrust
Since ever, stone is the natural element most used line overcomes the limits of the middle-third
in construction, in part because of its simplicity in explicitly on the top (extrados) and on the soffit
construction but mainly by its advantages in noticing that the normal tension to the hinges is not
strength capacity. The high compression strength superior to 1/10 of the simple compression
and abrasion resistance allow the possibility to strength of the material.
find ancient masonry structures still in a good state
of preservation even though all the adverse 3 Case Study
conditions that these structures were subjected
Bucelas church, also designated by Igreja da
throughout time (self-weight, wind, seism).
Nossa da Purificao is a remarkable sixteenth
The most important aspects regarding verification
century temple of Baroque style, classified as
of the safety in masonry structure are the
public interest real estate property in 15th May of
geometry and the knowledge of its collapse
1946. Even though some reparations have been
mechanism. The condition that the masonry
made in the 60th and 70th decades and more
should work in compression restrains geometric
recently, the building suffers from several
boundaries.
structural and constructive pathologies which
2.1 Dimensioning techniques of arched justify an urgent intervention from the entities
structures responsible for its management.
The central vault of the nave in brick masonry,
Traditionally, masonry structures consist in arches
plasted and with the original wall painting, was
that generate impulses that are supported by
originally a perfect arch but now it is found heavily
pillars. Over time the pillars undergo some
deformed, with emphasis for the plasters that
displacements, which cause structural
didnt follow the deformation of the vault. Also the
deformations that can lead to its collapse.
arch stones that intersperse the spans of the
The masonry arch was used plenty of times as a
central nave show serious deformations. In
structural solution to a vast diverse types of
addition there are visible hinges and slips between
structures. As it was mentioned by Huerta (1999),
voussoir.
the essential matters in the construction of arched
structures are shape and thickness of the arch and 3.1 Building Description
the thickness of the supports and buttresses.
Measuring 43.5 m length from the altar to the front
Pierre Couplet in 1730 made a work on the
door, the main body of the church displays a
security check of an arch, about the admissible
rectangular plant (Figure 3.1). The church is
thickness to a circular arch submitted to its own
divided in 3 sections, the central nave with a 5.5 m
weight. According to Couplet, collapse occurs
span and two aisles with a span of 2.7 m, in the
when the relation thickness/radius is t/R<0,101.
longitudinal direction it is composed by 5 spaces
Beyond Couplet, there were others interested in
between vaults restrained by perfectly
the study of the minimum admissible thickness in
symmetrical masonry arches. The shell of the
a circular arch. Among them, Heyman in 1969
naves are provided by the barrel vaults, in
corrected the analysis using the same collapse
masonry brick plastered with cement mortar
mechanism but correcting the critic hinges
(apparently with no steel addition) and covered by
location, and Ochsendorf in 2006, also determined
a roof with two sloping sides in tiles.
a different value for this parameter.

Table 1 Solutions to minimum admissible

thickness in a circular arch

t/R
Couplet (1730) 45 0.101
Heyman (1969) 58.8 0.106
Ochsendorf (2006) 54.8 0.1075

Between 1830 and 1840 appears simultaneously Figure 1 - Igreja Matriz de Bucelas Plant (Antunes,
in Germany (Gerstner, 1831), England (Moseley, 2010).
2
The slab has a slope of approximately 24% and
the ridge beam resting exactly on the central vault
closure has a section of 23 cm high by 33 cm
width.
3.2 Structural History of the Building
Originating in the Atlantic Ocean, on the 1st of
November of 1755 a seism struck hard in Lisbon,
disturbing the surroundings of Bucelas and its
buildings. According to Francisco Lus de Sousa
(Sousa, 1923), which cites a parish document,
the seism of 1755 quite ruined the church,
nonetheless one finds it repaired and with
greatness
Conferring to the narrative of the actual vicar that
is in the church since the final of 1960 decade, the
infiltration issues from rain water were chronic and
they were only solved as a result of an intervention
after the 1969 seism. In that work, the closure of
the three masonry arches of the nave were
mended, in a way, to lead them to their original
position, being highly unlikely for that to have
happened. At the time the churchs roof was also
rebuilt where it would have been moved the filling
of the extrados and placed an actual slab. As one
will see, the removal of that filling, probably
intending to relief the load over the vault was
harmful as well as the support of the ridge beam
at the closure of the arches. It is unknown if other
corrective measures with actual benefit for the
structure were taken.
3.3 Damages Monitoring and Identification
The main pathologies of this churchs structure are
associated with the aches deformation and with
the vault from the nave, thus with visible cracks
and hinges in the arches sections.
Before placing scaffolds (and shoring the arches)
in order to start the restoration of the wall painting
in 2009, the company Nova Tacula, Lda
performed a rigorous photographed and
topographic survey in the vault of the nave, with
the purpose of gathering knowledge about the
buildings geometry and detecting pathologies.
There were no surveys realized after that one
therefore there is no accurate knowledge of how
the damages have been developing.
3
Figure 2 - Lower View from the Naves Vault:
(Left) Main Door and (Right) High Altar
Arch 1
This arch is located over the rear wall (under the
churchs entrance) and its the least deformed
one. Because it was found in its original place it
was used as reference to define the other arches
initial state (with a span of 5.5 m).
Arch 2
Contrarily to the first arch, this one is the most
deformed arch. The deformation pattern indicates
that the arch settled to the span increase (in this
case around 35 cm, almost 6.4% of the free span)
through the generation of three hinges becoming
an isostatic structure, being able to maintain itself
in equilibrium without static redundancy. The
appearance of a fourth hinge (whose existence
was not yet detected on the site, but that the
occurrence may not be visible) will result in the
collapse of the arch (Figure 3).
Figure 3 - Collapse mechanism of an arch
Arches 3 e 4
The arches 3 and 4 show a growth of the span in
22 cm this is close to 4% of the span. A part from
some particularities, the deformation pattern of
these arches is similar to the second arch.
Arch 5
The increase of span in the fifth arch its of 19 cm
that means rise in 3.5%, although less deformed
compared with some of the previous ones, this
arch shows also the same deformation pattern as
them.
Aisle Arches
The arches and vaults of the aisles have
deformations cracks and openings of the hinges
that indicate a shortening of its spans. Given the
stiffness of the extern walls of the church, it is
improbable that the increase of the span in the
nave has been induced by the deformation of
these walls hence the increase of the span in the
nave arches could have been accommodated by
the aisles deformations.
Between May and March of 2015 inspections were
done to the extrados of the vault, allowing this way
to know the real thickness of the vault (18 cm),
which was unknown, verifying that the extrados
filling wasnt completely removed as it was
thought. Furthermore, a crack with a substantial
opening that represents the existence of an hinge
which removes static redundancy and puting in
danger of creating a collapse mechanism.
Regarding, the elements that support the ridge
beam, that seem to be located over the arches, it
is clearly visible that one finds itself loose, putting
at risk its function of transmitting the load to the
arch consequently, overloading the other arches.
3.4 Previous Studies
In 2010, Gonalo Antunes dedicated himself to the
structural security verification of Bucelas church.
Although, without the precise knowledge of the
vaults thickness and of the existence of the filling
in the extrados. Accordingly with the limit analyses
theory applied to the arches stability study
(Heyman, 1969) and Oschendorf study, Gonalo
reached a function that given the arch thickness (t)
and its medium radius (R) the increase of
maximum admissible of the span to an arch
subjected only to its own weight, stays in
equilibrium.
Figure 4 - Admissible span increases to an arched
structure (with an angle of opening of 2x90) as
function of its relation thickness-medium radius
4
Resorting the previous graphic, he concluded that
for an inner radius of 2.92 m the vault from
Bucelas church would have to have a thickness
above 49 cm to ensure a 35 cm increase of the
span and a thickness above 43 cm to ensure an
increase of 22 cm of the span. Being aware of
these results Gonalo assumed a 60 cm thickness
for the vault and studied its collapse to a
simultaneous solicitation of increasing the load
applied in the closure as well as in the span.
3.5 Performed Analyses
To do a safety verification of the arches and of the
vault in the actual state, first it needs to be
identified the non-deformed conditions. Given the
location of the first arch over a wall (rear wall)
displaying an approximately semicircular profile,
thus we assumed for it to be similar to the original
arch geometry. Having into account the measures
taken on site, it can be admitted that the arches on
its non-deformed state have an inner radius (r) of
2.75 m and a thickness of 0.17 m, so we can
consider for the vault an inner radius of 2.92 m
(2.75+0.17) and a 0.18 m value of thickness. It is
also known that there is filling up to 1.54 m from
the vaults base.
To generate discrete elements (UDEC e 3DEC), it
was admitted rigid blocks for the vault and
deformable blocks for the filling with a fine enough
grid. The Tables 2 and 3 present the mechanical
properties of these elements, where: Es is the
Young modulus, s the Poissons coefficient, s the
density, kn is the hinges compression stiffness, ks
the hinges shear stiffness, c the hinges cohesion,
and the hinges friction angle.
Table 2 - Mechanical Properties of the Vault, the
Arch and the Filling
s (kg/m3) Es (GPa) vs
Vault 2100 - -
Arch 630 - -
Filling 2100 1 0.2
Table 3 - Mechanical Properties of the hinges
kn ks c
(Gpa/m) (Gpa/m) (MPa) ()
Hinges 1000 1000 0.5 30

3.5.1 Study of the filling effect
Using software UDEC and the properties in table
2 and table 3, it was concluded that a vault with
2.92 m of radius and 18 cm of thickness cant stay
in equilibrium, when submitted to its own weight,
without the filling in its extrados.
so the analysis of the solicitation combination is
unnecessary.
3.5.3 Study of arch+vault
In the reinforced vault with masonry arch model, it
is admitted that the arch with a thickness of 0.17
m and a width of 0.30 m mobilizes 1m band of the
vault.

Figure 5 - UDEC model of isolate vault subjected

only to its own weight: without filling in its
extrados (Left) and with filling in its extrados
(Right)

3.5.2 Study of isolated vault Figure 6 - Geometry of arch+vault.

The filling present in the structure allows it to be
subjected to its own weight and another two
solicitations: concentrated load applied in the
closure and an increase of the span. When
analyzed in separate, the ultimate load of the vault
is 6kN and the maximum span is 32 cm. The load
absorption capacity can be unregarded since its
small when compared to the actual load (32 kN)
The equilibrium analysis show that the reinforced
vault is more resistant than the isolated vault.
When analyzed in separate, the arch+vault has an
ultimate load of 108 kN and the maximum span is
43 cm. When applying a joint solicitation on the
arch 2 which is the most deformed, the ultimate
load is 14 kN for a span of 35 cm.

3.5.4 Final model study

As it was mentioned, it is unlikely that the increase in span of the nave has induced deformations in the
exterior walls of the building. It becomes interesting to analyze the behavior of the structure in a whole
model, including the exterior walls, aisles arches and the support columns. This study was done using two
models: UDEC model and a 3DEC model.

Figure 7 - UDEC model and respective geometry (Left) and 3DEC model (Right).
The results show that the exterior walls have a low deformation capacity therefore the increase in span of
the nave is accommodated by the aisles deformation. The collapse of the structure happens in the central
arch for a load of 91 kN in UDEC model and for a load of 117 kN in 3DEC model. It can be concluded that
the tri-dimensional effects increases the global structural strength.
5
3.5.5 Proposed reinforcement solution
In the reinforcement solution, it was given a
preference to the restriction of the horizontal
movement and prevention of cracking near the
support resorting to metallic elements. Knowing
that the nave elements will be in tension and the
aisles will be in compression, it was chosen to
use a cable with a 32 mm diameter in the nave
and metallic beams with a hollow section of
80mm diameter and 6 mm thickness in the
aisles.
Figure 8 - Proposed reinforcement solution.
Using the tri-dimensional model, it was
performed a static analysis in which it was
considered a concentrated load in the closure of
the arches. It was found that the ultimate load is
395 kN which is 3.4 times greater than that of the
unreinforced model.
Table 4 Ultimate Loads
Tri-dimensional model Ultimate Load
Without reinforcement 117 kN
With reinforcement 395 kN
Using a bi-dimensional model, a dynamic
analyses was performed to understand the
reaction of the structure under a seismic
movement (Type 2 regular seism for Loures). It
was determined that the unreinforced structure
shows a low opposition to seismic movements
applied to the base, as it collapsed after only 4.3
s. The reinforced solution allows the Church to
remain in equilibrium for the studied solicitation.
6
4 Conclusions
The performed study allowed to conclude that
the discrete element models can be applied into
the structural analyses masonry buildings.
The equilibrium of the vault with a thickness of
18cm is only possible due to the filling that
stayed in its extrados, as certified by the UDEC
model. The vault reinforced with the masonry
arch is more resistant than the vault just by itself,
corresponding to a higher collapse load and an
increase of the maximum span.
The elaboration of bi-dimensional and tri-
dimensional models allowed to compare the
results obtained by these two different kinds of
analyses, although the outcome was not too
different, tri-dimensional models permit to get
more realistic results.
The reinforced solution studied improves the
structures static and dynamic behavior in
matter. The introduction of cables in the navel
and metallic beams on the aisles resulted in the
increase of the collapse load from 117 kN to 395
kN. The structure was submitted to a dynamic
trial performed in a plane model due to
computational effort. It was concluded that the
inclusion of the transversal elements enhanced
the seismic structural behavior. Though, the
non-reinforced model collapsed to a seismic
movement caused by a sign compatible with a
standard seism of type 2 in Loures, the
reinforced model remained in equilibrium.
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Mestrado em Estruturas e Construo Civil;
Universidade de Braslia; Brasilia
Gago, A.; 2004; Anlise Estrutural de Arcos,
Abbadas e Cpulas; Dissertao para
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Civil; IST; Lisboa
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Horwood Limited; London

Heyman, J.; 1995; The stone skeleton -

structural engineering of masonry architecture;
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Loureno, P.; 2005; Assessment, diagnosis and

strengthening of Outeiro Church, Portugal;
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634645

Ochsendorf, J.; 2002; Collapse of Masonry

Structures; Dissertao para Obteno do PhD;
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