Design and construction of a post-tensioned masonry arch footbridge

The vaults are antifunicular structures or very close to them under permanent loads, in which the structure works under compression. The purpose of the introduction of prestressing is to provide additional resistant capacity to the masonry vaults. Among the advantages obtained by prestressing the masonry vaults, there are the greater lightness, the sustainability when using traditional materials or the absence of creep and shrinkage phenomena.

In the Structural Engineering Lab the construction of a medium-scale prototype of a post-tensioned masonry arch footbridge has been carried out. The objective of this project is twofold: on the one hand, to study the constructive difficulties involved in the construction of this prototype, and on the other, to validate the theoretical results previously obtained through tests.

See below the video of the construction process of the post-tensioned masonry arch footbridge: