Fracture test of a Gothic ribbed vault

Abstract

A Gothic ribbed vault has been built at the School of Architecture of Madrid in order to investigate the construction complexities of this kind of vaults. The ribbed vault is described in the manuscript of Alonso de Vandelvira, and its shape was reconstructed making using the drawings this architect from the 16th century. The fracture test was carried on by loading the central keystone of the vault until its collapse took place. The experiment was filmed and by doing so, it was possible to observe the failure mechanism of the vault. At the same time, it was interesting to compare this collapse experience with the results obtained using two different me-thods. First, a stability calculation was carried out through graphic statics, and secondly a calcu-lation was performed using the rigid-block analysis method. The focus of this paper is to show and analyze the results of both studies.