SNSF Project

In recent years, our (academic/theoretical) understanding of the behaviour of unreinforced masonry (URM) structures has improved significantly, and many advanced technological solutions for conservation have been developed. However, there is still a lack of appropriate methods and tools that can be used for the assessment of URM structures in every day practice.

Therefore, since 2018, the Block Research Group has been working on “Practical Stability Assessment Strategies for Vaulted Unreinforced Masonry Structures” with support of the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF). The goal of this research project is to create tools suitable for everyday engineering practice and to develop appropriate analysis strategies for diverse contexts and circumstances related to the availability of time, budget and available data.

The SNSF research results are made available to the scientific and professional community through COMPAS Masonry. COMPAS Masonry represents a unique computational framework as it provides a common data management system and connects different tools and methodologies altogether. Therefore, it allows to look at the same assessment problem from different perspectives and opens up the possibility to explore several mechanical scenarios comparing different methodological solutions. Nonetheless, as an open-source framework, it offers to the industry, academy and practitioners the unique opportunity to collaborate, participate in a positive loop, where everyone can contribute.

It bundles different solvers that are built up over a common data management system, compas_assembly, that provides a fast, direct and robust way to handle complex geometries both in terms of geometric data structures (via graph network theories) and material properties distributions. The main tools developed were compas_rbe, compas_tno, compas_prd, compas_cra, and compas_dem. More information regarding each different solver can be found in the solvers page.

Beyond the computational developement and implementations of the different masonry solvers, the theoretical foundation developed during the project has been communicated though an extensive list of peer-reviewed and journal publications which are listed here.

Additionally, the researchers of the project have participated in workshops and given presentations which are also available through the respective pages.