Collapse of non-symmetric masonry arches with coulomb friction: Monasterio’s approach and equilibrium analysis

The first scholar who studied in depth the collapse conditions of non-symmetric masonry arches has been Joaquín Monasterio in his unpublished manuscript, entitled Nueva teórica sobre el empuje de bóvedas. In the present paper, Monasterio’s approach will be presented, by showing that it can be framed within the historical kinematic analysis rather than within Coulomb’s method, which anticipated for standard behavior the lower bound theorem of the modern plasticity theory. Monasterio a priori identifies some plausible collapse mechanisms, by defining the conditions required for their activation, so that his procedure can be placed in an upper bound framework. In the current work, a comparison between the results obtained via the lower bound analysis and the kinematic approach proposed by Monasterio is performed, with reference to simple case studies of symmetric and non-symmetric arches.