Brick Arch Floors 1

[pie]

We are looking at carrying out a mill conversion and wondered if anyone knew how we could assess the load carrying capacity of the brick arch floors without doing insitu load tests?

 

[jheidt2543]

My suggestion would be to find some OLD design books, constuction handbooks or architectural handbooks that cover that type of construction.

One such, that has some limited information would be "Handbook of Building Construction" by George A. Hool and Nathan C. Johnson, McGraw-Hill, 1929, Volumns 1 & 2. Pages 299-304 covers masonry arch design and pages 426-436 covers hollow-tile floor construction.

Another that may have some useful information is "The Design of Masonry Structures and Foundations", by Clement C. Williams, McGraw-Hill, 1930.

I'm sure that there are others that would be more specific to your project, you will have to search the web and some engineering libraries.

Good luck!

 

[pie]

Thanks for that, will try those documents.

 

[ick2]

In 1936 Fuller and Kerekes published "Analysis and Design of Steel Structures" which reproduces the National Fireproofing Corporations Load Tables for flat and segental arch floors. These tables based on a factor of safety of 7, list the safe load for a 6" arch spanning 4 ft as 236psf and that for a 12" arch spanning 7' as 206psf.
Properly build tile arches in good condition theoretically should be strong enough for most of the building loads.

 

[pie]

thanks again, I have found a very good publication by the ICE titled "structural appraisal of iron framed textile mills" which has details on jack arch floor and how to calculate load capacity.
Will try and obtain and review the book you quote