A preliminary assessment was carried out on this UK highway bridge using LimitState:RING 2.0.

In advance of performing an intrusive investigation, a variety of scenarios were explored, including the case where masonry backing material was present above the piers (commonly encountered in multi-span bridges).

In this case the critical failure mechanism involved two spans - clearly demonstrating that it is potentially unsafe to analyse the bridges as a series of single spans simply because the piers are deemed by some measure to be 'stocky' (as advocated in certain assessment codes).

Three span masonry arch bridge being surveyed

Bridge Dimensions

Analysis of three span masonry arch bridge using LimitState:RING 2.0