Research and practice on masonry cross vaults A review

[EN] Masonry cross vaults, which began to be built in Europe in the times of the Roman Empire and reached heights of extraordinary splendor during the Gothic Period, are part of an impressive architectural heritage, which stand in need of evaluation, maintenance and repairs or renovation. Nowadays, the requirements of preservation and conservation of the historical heritage call for a strategy oriented on the description of the structural behaviour from different characteristic perspectives without neglecting the functional, architectonic and structural features. The present paper is intended to discuss the different research approaches adopted by several authors during the past and to show how numerical simulations in conjunction with experimental studies can provide the tools for the quantification of the damages produced by a variety of different critical events. To this scope, this paper includes an extensive and somewhat ambitious review, dealing with a wide variety of aspects, such as: (a) a bibliometric study, (b) classification of the types of cross vaults, (c) structural behavior, (d) types of failures and damage, (e) numerical simulation, (f) experimental testing, (g) monitoring, and (h) retrofitting. The review is expected to be of great interest for architects and engineers working in the field of evaluating and retrofitting the architectural heritage, as well as to those researchers who would find it useful to have at hand in a single document the most important advances made in the field of masonry cross vaults in recent years.This work was carried out within the SIMAX Project (BIA2014-59036-R) financed by the Spanish Ministry for the Economy, Industry and Competitiveness. The authors wish to express their gratitude to the collaborators and participants of the SIMAX Project: Juan J. Moragues, Teresa M. Pellicer, Ignacio Paya-Zaforteza, Ignazio Floris, Manuel Buitrago, Benjamin Torres, Salvador Ivorra, David Bru, Michele Betti, Lorenzo Papini, Eugenio Pellis, Mercedes Gomez-Ferrer and Gabriele Milani. The first author (Elisa Bertolesi) would like to thank the Universitat Politecnica de Valencia for funding received for her postdoctoral grant (PAID-10-17).Bertolesi, E.; Adam, JM.; Rinaudo, P.; Calderón García, PA. (2019). Research and practice on masonry cross vaults A review. Engineering Structures. 180:67-88. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.engstruct.2018.10.085S678818