ABSTRACT

Ancient Chinese stone arch bridges are an important kind of architectural heritage in China, and they are often threatened by potential collapse problems. The stone arrangements of the arches in ancient Chinese stone arch bridges are quite different from those in Western countries, which may lead to different collapse modes. Thus, the collapse mechanisms of arches with typical “Chinese stone arrangements” urgently need to be studied. In this paper, the stone arrangements commonly used in ancient Chinese stone arch bridges were first investigated and summarized in detail. Then, finite element models of four typical arches with different stone arrangements were established to study their mortar failure processes, collapse modes, and bearing capacities. After that, the influence of the friction coefficients of the voussoirs on the collapse modes and the bearing capacities of these typical arches was analyzed. The results show that the stone arrangements used in ancient Chinese stone arch bridges can generally be divided into three groups according to their lateral linkages. The bearing capacities of the four typical arches are sorted as follows when the friction coefficient is 0.3: the FJBL method > the HLFJBL method > the HL method > the BL method. When the friction coefficient decreases from 0.3 to 0.1, the live-load bearing capacities of these arches decrease by 33%–55%. When the friction coefficient increases from 0.3 to ∞, the live-load bearing capacities of these arches increase by 3%–11%. The study results can provide a scientific basis for the conservation of ancient Chinese stone bridges.