Pragmatic multi-scale and multi-physics analysis of Charles Bridge in Prague

Charles Bridge in Prague is one of the most famous monuments of the European architectural heritage. As is typical of complex historical structures, a realistic quantitative computational assessment of the bridge response should address multi-physics, multi-scale, time-dependent and three-dimensional aspects of the problem. In this paper, an example of such a study is reported. To keep the model’s complexity manageable, the analysis is executed in a fully-uncoupled format, where the outputs of individual simplified sub-problems concerning mainly transport phenomena serve as inputs for the dominant part: detailed non-linear three-dimensional and mechanics-oriented simulations of selected bridge segments. The obtained results not only provide the basis for reconstruction works currently in progress, but also demonstrate the applicability and limitations of multi-scale and multi-physics paradigms when faced with complex practical engineering problems.