Experimental characterization of the mechanical behaviour of components and materials of stone masonry railway bridges

This article focuses on the experimental characterization of constituent materials of stone masonry railway bridges. The study refers to two railway bridges, an overpass in Durrães (near Barcelos, Portugal) and a culvert in São Pedro da Torre (next to the north border Portugal-Spain), both included in the Portuguese railway network. The experimental campaign comprised core sampling and in situ tests using several techniques, namely Dynamic Probing Super Heavy (DPSH), georadar, Ménard pressuremeter (PMT) and flat-jacks, as well as lab tests on constituent materials' samples taken from the studied bridges. The main objective of this work is therefore to use these experimental results for calibrating numerical models for structural behaviour simulation of the two bridge cases.