A Continuous Microscopic Modeling Approach for Simulation of Masonry Structures

Abstract

Masonry is one of the oldest and widely used construction material across the globe due to its cost efficiency, but it is vulnerable to lateral loads. The assessment of masonry structures is of dire need for restoration, retrofitting and strengthening of structures. In this regard, a full-scale experimental assessment of masonry structures is prohibitive and multi-scaled experiments are costly, laborious and time consuming. To address this challenge, a numerical model could suffice a full-scale assessment of masonry structures within a feasible timeframe with requisite validation tests. In this paper a novel micro modelling technique, a continuous microscopic model is proposed to assess the shear behavior of masonry across different scales. A concrete damage plasticity (CDP) constitutive material model is utilized in brick units and mortar layers, while the interfaces are modelled by partitioning a part into masonry pattern cells. The numerical model is validated with experiments to investigate the effectiveness of model. The numerical results are in good agreement with physical behavior of masonry shear walls with a 3% deviation of the peak shear strength. Sensitivity studies are performed and compared with experimental results to identify the optimum CDP parameters which yielded optimum value of dilatation angle as 11o, eccentricity as 0.1, stress ratio as 1.16, shape factor as 2/3 and the viscosity parameter to be 0.001. In addition, the robustness of the model is checked for a full-scale 3D model of a room and compared in terms of relative rigidity.