A DAMAGE MODEL FOR MASONRY STRUCTURES

In this paper a brittle damage model for masonry structures characteri zed by a unit cell composed of mortar, blocks and a finite number of f ractures is proposed. Initially, a micromechanically consistent binary representation of the damage variable is proposed for regular heterog eneous media, and a discrete damage kinetic law is developed. Then, a typical masonry material is considered and a specific damage model is derived from the previous one by employing the classical cohesive Coul omb failure criterion and by taking into account the specific microstr ucture of the masonry. This damage model is used to formulate the nonl inear quasistatic problem of masonry structures subject to assigned lo ading paths. Then, a numerical procedure based on the finite element m ethod is implemented in a computer code. Finally, some applications ar e developed to analyze the nonlinear behavior of simple masonry struct ures and to show the capability of the proposed damage model to captur e the differences of behavior by varying the microstructure and the ph ysical properties of the masonry. (C) Elsevier, Paris.