NON LINEAR HOMOGENIZATION TECHNIQUES TO SOLVE MASONRY STRUCTURES PROBLEMS

RICARDO DANIEL QUINTEROS; SERGIO HORACIO OLLER; LIZ GRACIELA NALLIM

Porto

Congreso; 16th International Conference on Composite Structures; 2011

FEUP

The behaviour of masonry material subjected to different in-plane loadingcombination is studied in this work. The masonry is considered as a periodic compositematerial composed by a regular distribution of brick and mortar and it is analysed using ahomogenization technique. The mechanical properties of the masonry, as an orthotropichomogeneous material, depend on the geometrical and mechanical properties of thecomponents based on the study of the equilibrium and compatibility of a basic cell. Themasonry is a frictional material and its behaviour depends on the loading direction, for thesereasons, a unilateral damage model is chosen for the analysis. This model describes thebehaviour of brittle materials subjected to tensile-compressive cyclic loads based on theintroduction of two damage variables and it assumes that the damage is due to the beginningand growth of cracks only in the mortar joints. It is considered that the bricks have a linearelastic constitutive relationship. Numerical applications are performed with a non-linearfinite element code in order to test the proposed procedure by comparing the results withthose available in the literature and also with experimental data.