ABSTRACT
These last decades, studies interest about historic masonry buildings has highly increased. The use of limit analysis and more particularly, Jacques Heyman’s works in the second half of the twentieth century widely contributed to this development. Considering three hypotheses based on most failures observations (infinite compression resistance, no traction resistance and no sliding between the blocks), the static approach gives a simple and easy criterion of potential stability. The set of all the application points of the forces on each joint, as known as the line of thrust, must be contained within the geometric limits of each joint in order to insure the structure potential stability. The aim of this research is to develop an interactive tool able to consider 2D geometries extracted from a 3D model (surveys for instance) and able to explore various hypotheses. Using the multi-agent system principles of programming and a genetic algorithm, a computing tool which can apply this static theorem for any kind of two-dimensional geometry structure composed of blocks has been developed as a plugin for the 3D modeling software Rhinoceros. The user can set different kind of hypotheses, calculus settings and loadings: fixing chosen points of the thrust line, add forces and seismic solicitations. The tool interactivity allows the user to move the joints force characteristics (point of application, direction and intensity) and see the graphic result immediately with the line of thrust and the force diagram. In addition, the tool provides a security friction coefficient for each joint and the possibility to find the extreme thrusts for any geometrical topologic equivalent of an arch. The tool possibilities are evaluated with the application case of the Sainte-Marie-Madeleine’s Basilic in Vézelay.
