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- Network approach to assess the impact of ghost-rock karsts located in the neighbourhood of masonry structures
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Network approach to assess the impact of ghost-rock karsts located in the neighbourhood of masonry structures
Abstract
Efficient for erecting buildings based on small-size elements, unreinforced masonry is used since centuries in many places around the world. The intrinsic mechanical weaknesses that they exhibit can however reveal problematic when subject to parasite actions. Asleep under buildings, ghost-rock karst constitutes therefore a severe threat: any external action is likely to activate it; leading to potential modification of the ground bearing capacities and then eventually inducing irreversible damages to the masonry. When building in such critical zones, architects have to integrate karst risks from the very beginning of their mission by relying on building specialists who focus their attention on the limitation of the concerned structures vulnerability. To achieve their aim, these engineers have to estimate to which extent a ground defect, induced by an activated ghost-rock karst and appearing in the neighbourhood of a given masonry building, is likely to damage it. In continuity with stability studies, these structural experts involved in karst risk management commonly establish a great number of scenarios and analyse them by simulating the soil-structure interaction problems using commercial finite element codes. To overcome interpretation difficulties, post-processing facilities can reveal of great interest for the exploitation of numerical results. We present here a network approach to automate the post-processing of soil-structure interactions and help assessing the impact of ghost-rock karsts on masonry structures. Following a transdisciplinary presentation of the problematic, we detail the approach for automatically quantifying the impact of a karst-induced soil defect. We then describe a practical implementation and illustrate the feasibility of the proposed methodology on a case study.
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About: Laurent VAN PARYS
UMONS – Dept of Civil Engineering, Place du Parc 20, 7000 MONS
About: Jérôme NOEL
UMONS – Dept of Civil Engineering, Place du Parc 20, 7000 MONS
About: John DECEUSTER
UMONS – Dept of Geology and Applied Geology, Place du Parc 20, 7000 MONS
About: Georges KOUROUSSIS
UMONS - Dept of Theoretical mechanics, Dynamics and Vibrations, Place du Parc 20, 7000 MONS