Mechanical Analysis of the Recycled Concrete Brick Masonry Wall under In-Plane Load

Abstract

The purpose of this paper was to investigate the mechanical behavior and failure mode of recycled concrete brick masonry wall under cycling in-plane load. These models of masonry walls were constructed in the laboratory and experimented under in-plane cycling load. The masonry wall was made of recycled concrete bricks joined by mortar, with gypsum lining on both faces. A simulation based on the experiment was carried out using the finite element software ANSYS. In the proposed FE model, the recycling concrete bricks and joints were modeled separately, allowing for nonlinear deformation characteristics of the two materials. The results of the experiment and the finite element analysis were analyzed and compared. When the stress distributions were taken into consideration in the experiments and solutions of ANSYS, it was observed that the stress concentration occurred on two diagonals of the masonry wall. The destruction process and characteristics of the masonry wall were obtained by the experiments. The results of finite element method matched experimental results very well. The FE software ANSYS can be used in the analysis of recycling concrete brick masonry walls under in-plane cycling load and strength capacity.