Abstract
A great proportion of the existing architectural heritage, including historical and monumental constructions, is made of brick/block masonry. This material shows a strong anisotropic behaviour resulting from the specific arrangement of units and mortar joints, which renders the accurate simulation of the masonry response a complex task. In general, mesoscale modelling approaches provide realistic predictions due to the explicit representation of the masonry bond characteristics. However, these detailed models are very computationally demanding and mostly unsuitable for practical assessment of large structures. Macroscale models are more efficient, but they require complex calibration procedures to evaluate model material parameters. This paper presents an advanced continuum macroscale model based on a two-scale nonlinear description for masonry material which requires only simple calibration at structural scale. A continuum strain field is considered at the macroscale level, while a 3D distribution of embedded internal layers allows for the anisotropic mesoscale features at the local level. A damage-plasticity constitutive model is employed to mechanically characterise each internal layer using different material properties along the two main directions on the plane of the masonry panel and along its thickness. The accuracy of the proposed macroscale model is assessed considering the response of structural walls previously tested under in-plane and out-of-plane loading and modelled using the more refined mesoscale strategy. The results achieved confirm the significant potential and the ability of the proposed macroscale description for brick/block masonry to provide accurate and efficient response predictions under different monotonic and cyclic loading conditions.
Highlights
Brick/block masonry represents one of the most ancient building techniques, which is still used to build modern structures due to the simple way of construction and low material cost [1, 2]
A two-scale mechanical description is proposed, where a continuum strain–displacement field describes the material at the macroscopic level, while separate internal layers allow for the 3D anisotropic mesostructure of the material
The nonlinear material behaviour is defined at the level of the sub-local layers enabling the use of different constitutive laws for each main material direction, which are calibrated according to the specific masonry bond and the characteristics of units and mortar joints
Summary
Brick/block masonry represents one of the most ancient building techniques, which is still used to build modern structures due to the simple way of construction and low material cost [1, 2]. Another class of efficient macromodels is represented by hybrid discrete modelling strategies utilising rigid elements and nonlinear links as rigid body spring models (RBSM) [26, 27] and discrete macroelement models (DMEM) [28–30] In these numerical descriptions, as for continuous macromodels, masonry is considered as an equivalent homogeneous material and the mesh is independent from the specific arrangement of units and mortar joints. Enhanced accuracy can be achieved adopting improved continuum theories at the macroscale based upon second-order or micropolar (Cosserat) material models, where non-local homogenization or multi-scale techniques are used to link micro/meso to macroscale Such numerical descriptions provide a more refined representation of the masonry micro-structure [36–38] describing size/scale effects and allowing for the finite dimensions of the masonry units and their potential relative rotations [39, 40]. The accuracy and efficiency of the proposed model are investigated comparing the numerical results against experimental data and detailed mesoscale simulations, focusing on the nonlinear response up to collapse of masonry panels subjected to in-plane and out-of-plane monotonic and cyclic loadings
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