COMPUTATIONAL MODELLING OF MASONRY, BRICKWORK AND BLOCKWORK STRUCTURES
Edited by: J.W. Bull

Chapter 4

The Dynamics of Masonry Bell Towers

The English system of bell-ringing is to swing the bell through 360^o from the mouth-up position. The bell acts as a compound pendulum, and applies significant transient horizontal forces on to the bell tower. The dynamic responses of 19 church towers in the North-East of England were recorded using low frequency accelerometers, during bell-ringing. The bell forces were estimated from in-situ measurements. Finite element methods were used to estimate natural frequencies, mode shapes and transient response of the bell towers. Effective stiffness and mass of the masonry sandwich walls were deduced for each tower.

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