Evaluation of the Perpendicular Flat Vault Inventor's Intuitions Through Large Scale Instrumented Testing

This communication describes an experimental setup devised to evaluate the structural behaviour of the flat vault in terms of thrust, ductility, loading capacity, failure mode and influence of design parameters. Three vaults are tested that differ by their span and the joint angle between the voussoirs. The instrumentation allows a continuous measure of the thrust in both directions and of the centre point displacement under load variation.The results are used to evaluate the relevance of the assumptions underlying the representations of the mechanical phenomena available to the inventors and allow validation and calibration of numerical models. These are then used to evaluate the effect of design parameters and to compare the efficiency of Abeille's design with other more traditional flat vaults that implement converging joints in a one way or two way layout.