The effect of geometry on the seismic capacity of masonry buttressed arches with
circular shape is addressed in this paper. In particular, in the contest of
the limit analysis approach for masonry structures, a numerical procedure
developed by the authors in previous studies is here used to perform an extensive
parametric analysis of 320 circular buttressed arches, obtained by varying the
geometrical configuration, namely the angle of embrace, the arch thickness and
the buttress aspect ratio. The aim of the parametric analysis is studying
the effect of both arch configuration (angle of embrace and arch thickness)
and buttress geometry (height and width) on the horizontal strength of
buttressed arches. To this end, the results of this study are presented in
terms of collapse multiplier and failure mechanism aimed to provide reference
values to be used for straightforward assessment of the horizontal strength of
arched masonry structures, and for checking the results of more complex
structural analyses performed by using “advanced” structural engineering
software.