Publications related to Stonemasonry

Experimental Investigation on Size-Effect of Rubble Stone Masonry Walls Under In-Plane Horizontal Loading: Overview and Preliminary Results

Rubble stone masonry is a common construction typology of historical city centres and vernacular architecture. While past earthquakes have shown that it is one of the most vulnerable masonry construction typologies, there are few experimental campaigns giv ...

2024

Digital Twins of Stone Masonry Buildings for Damage Assessment

Katrin Beyer, Radhakrishna Achanta, Bryan German Pantoja Rosero

Digital twins are virtual models of physical objects or systems that enable real-time monitoring and analysis. In the ﬁeld of stone masonry buildings, digital twins can be used to assess damage, predict maintenance needs, and opti- mize building performanc ...

Springer2024

Micro modeling of irregular stone masonry walls using mathematical programming

Katrin Beyer, Qianqing Wang, Ketson Roberto Maximiano Dos Santos

While understanding the shear strength of stone masonry structures is important for the design and the mainte- nance, we still lack computational tools for predicting the strength as a function of the stone layout. Here we implement an end-to-end image bas ...

Springer2024

Geometrical digital twins of the as-built microstructure of three-leaf stone masonry walls with laser scanning

Katrin Beyer, Yves Weinand, Julien Gamerro, Savvas Saloustros, Andrea Settimi, Andrea Cabriada Ascencio

Research on irregular stone masonry walls is hampered by the lack of detailed geometrical models of their internal micro-structure, i.e. the shape and size of each stone and its position within the wall. Without such a geometric digital twin of walls teste ...

2023

Automated post-earthquake damage assessment of stone masonry buildings integrating machine learning, computer vision, and physics-based modeling

Bryan German Pantoja Rosero

Current post-earthquake damage assessment methodologies are not only time-consuming but also subjective in nature and difficult to document. Recent advancements in artificial intelligence and technological devices make it possible to accomplish this task a ...

EPFL2023

Design of New Low-Carbon Floor Systems by Reusing Cut Cast-in-Place Concrete Pieces

Corentin Jean Dominique Fivet, Numa Joy Bertola, Célia Marine Küpfer

As floors typically account for the largest share of a building embodied carbon footprint, new strategies to build low-carbon floors must be developed and implemented. Among these strategies, the reuse of existing components is a promising circular approac ...

Novus Press2023

Building structures made of reused cut reinforced concrete slabs and walls: A case study

Corentin Jean Dominique Fivet, Maléna Bastien Masse, Nicole Widmer

Reuse of reinforced concrete (RC) components reduces construction’s environmental impacts and waste. Rather than crushing the concrete of an obsolete structure, its components are saw cut and later reassembled in a new structure. The theoretical feasibilit ...

CRC Press2023

Geometrical Treatise on the Modelling of 3D Particulate Inclusion-Matrix Microstructures with an Application to Historical Stone Masonry Walls

Mahmoud S. M. Shaqfa

As historical stone masonry structures are vulnerable and prone to damage in earthquakes, investigating their structural integrity is important to reduce injuries and casualties while preserving their historical value. Stone masonry is a composite material ...

EPFL2022

A virtual microstructure generator for 3D stone masonry walls

Katrin Beyer, Mahmoud S. M. Shaqfa

Detailed micromodel simulations of stone masonry walls require as input a 3D mesh that represents a realistic arrangement of stones in the masonry wall. In this paper, we constructed the first 3D masonry microstructures to derive 2D and 3D finite or discre ...

ELSEVIER2022

Image-based geometric digital twinning for stone masonry elements

Katrin Beyer, Bryan German Pantoja Rosero, Savvas Saloustros

We present an image-based pipeline for generating geometrical digital twins (GDTs) of stone masonry elements with detail down to the stone level. For this purpose, we acquire RGB images of the individual stones and of the wall during the construction phase ...

2022

Blind predictions of shake table testing of aggregate masonry buildings

Katrin Beyer, Igor Tomic, Andrea Penna

In many historical centers in Europe, stone masonry is part of building aggregates, which developed when the layout of the city or village was densified. The analysis of such building aggregates is very challenging and modelling guidelines missing. Advance ...

2021

Uncertainties in the Seismic Assessment of Historical Masonry Buildings

Katrin Beyer, Francesco Vanin, Igor Tomic

Seismic assessments of historical masonry buildings are affected by several sources of epistemic uncertainty. These are mainly the material and the modelling parameters and the displacement capacity of the elements. Additional sources of uncertainty lie in ...

2021

Experimental investigation of strength, stiffness and drift capacity of rubble stone masonry walls

Katrin Beyer, Amir Rezaie, Michele Godio

There is limited available research on rubble stone masonry walls, which are vulnerable under seismic loading. This paper presents an experimental campaign of cyclic shear compression tests on six large-scale walls of this topology. The effect of the axial ...

2020

Blind predictions of shake table testing of aggregate masonry buildings

Katrin Beyer, Igor Tomic, Andrea Penna

In many historical centers in Europe, stone masonry is part of building aggregates, which developed when the layout of the city or village was densified. The analysis of such building aggregates is very challenging and modelling guidelines missing. Advance ...

2020

The ratio of shear to elastic modulus of in-plane loaded masonry

Katrin Beyer, Bastian Valentin Wilding, Michele Godio

When designing unreinforced masonry buildings, the wall stiffness and, consequently, the masonry elastic and shear modulus E and G are essential parameters. Current codes provide empirical estimates of the masonry elastic modulus and a ratio between the sh ...

2020

Equivalent frame models for in-plane and out-of-plane response of unreinforced masonry buildings

Francesco Vanin

The seismic assessment of masonry buildings, both modern unreinforced masonry (URM) buildings and historical heritage constructions, is a complex task, characterised by a several sources of uncertainty, which regard the appropriate modelling of strategy th ...

EPFL2019

Quasi-static shear-compression tests on stone masonry walls with plaster: Influence of load history and axial load ratio

Katrin Beyer, Francesco Vanin, Shenghan Zhang, Michele Godio

This paper describes quasi-static cyclic shear-compression tests on six plastered single-leaf stone masonry walls. Of the six walls, four are tested under different axial load ratios, performing a cyclic load history with two cycles per increasing drift de ...

2019

Micro-mechanical finite element modeling for in-plane behavior of historical masonry

Shenghan Zhang

Seismic assessment of unreinforced masonry structures remains a challenge. This dissertation investigates the in-plane behavior of historical masonry elements and proposes an advanced simulation method based on the cohesive zone model (CZM) in a finite ele ...

EPFL2018

A 2D typology generator for historical masonry elements

Katrin Beyer, Shenghan Zhang, Martin Hofmann

The mechanical response of stone masonry depends on the properties of the components and also on the typology created by the stone units and the mortar joints. While the influence of the component strength on masonry is relatively well studied, few studies ...

2018

Estimates for the stiffness, strength and drift capacity of stone masonry walls based on 123 quasi-static cyclic tests reported in the literature

Katrin Beyer, Francesco Vanin, Dario Zaganelli, Andrea Penna

This paper summarises 123 existing quasi-static shear–compression tests on stone masonry walls and evaluates the results to provide the input required for the displacement-based assessment of stone masonry buildings. Based on the collected data, existing c ...

2017