DEVELOPMENTS TO THE RING MASONRY ARCH BRIDGE ANALYSIS SOFTWARE

The RING computational limit analysis software for masonry arch bridges was originally developed as a research tool in the early 1990's but has been publicly available via an internet site since 2001. This paper describes recent and planned futur e developments to the software which is currently being completely rewritten, in cluding: order of magnitude improvements in its computational efficiency; a non-associative constitut ive model for sliding friction; enhancements to the general usability of the software. The nsoftware is being developed using an object-oriented approach so that further significant dev elopments (e.g. 3D arch analysis and full coupled arch-soil limit analysis) should be able t o be readily incorporated in the future.