NUMERICAL MODELING OF BRICK MASONRY PANELS SUBJECT TO LATERAL LOADINGS

A homogenization technique has been introduced to investigate the elas tic-brittle behaviour of masonry panels subject to incremental lateral loading. For modelling the elastic behaviour of masonry, two successi ve steps of homogenization are used to obtain equivalent elastic prope rties. In the first step, brick units are homogenized with perpend joi nts to give equivalent elastic properties of a stacked system. This st acked system, in the second step, is then homogenized with the bed joi nts to obtain equivalent material properties for masonry. Tensile crac king is the only nonlinearity considered in this paper. Cracking is ju dged on the basis of stresses and strengths of each of the constituent materials. The cracks developed, if any, are also homogenized with th e homogenized masonry and equivalent nonlinear stress-strain relations hips for cracked masonry are derived. The constitutive model is incorp orated in a three-dimensional finite element code. It has been verifie d and validated with experimental data on the response of a set of lat erally loaded rectangular masonry panels with and without openings. It is considered that the model can be used for predicting the physical behaviour of laterally loaded panels of arbitrary geometry and boundar y conditions. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd