ADVANCED FINITE ELEMENT MODELLING OF HETEROGENEOUS STRUCTURES WITH MASONRY COMPONENTS

Abstract eng:
Masonry is a material widely used in historic as well as modern civil engineering structures, frequently coupled with other materials, forming heterogeneous structures -e.g. masonry bridges, infill frames. Thus the accurate numerical modelling of its behaviour is important for design and assessment purposes, especially under seismic loading conditions. In general, unreinforced masonry presents a complex anisotropic behaviour due to the interaction among the different constitutive components. The mechanical response at structural scale depends on the properties of each constituent and is strongly connected to the mesostructure of the material. As a result the development of a generic modelling approach which could be applied in arbitrary geometries remains a major challenge. Macroscale models often lead to inaccurate failure mode predictions. Conversely, mesoscale modelling approaches, allow a more realistic representation of masonry structural elements. The work presented here builds on the work done in the CSM group of Imperial College London for the advanced finite element modelling of unreinforced masonry. A mesoscale computational strategy accounting for both geometric and material non-linearity has already been developed and validated [1].

• Export as: BibTeX | MARC | MARCXML | DC | EndNote | NLM | RefWorks
• Add to your basket