Ricerc@Sapienza

Under horizontal loadings, such as seismic actions, buckling phenomena can strongly affect the bearing capacity of masonry walls to gravity loads. Indeed, due to the low tensile strength of the mortar, when vertically loaded masonry members are subjected to bending moments induced by load eccentricity, out-of-plane collapse mechanisms often prevail
on compressive vertical crushing. This work presents a two-dimensional micromechanical approach relying

This paper presents a kinematic enriched finite element model for nonlinear analysis of brick masonry walls loaded in their plane. The finite element accounts for the transverse deformation of the wall and permits to reproduce mortar-brick interaction in wall thickness direction. Non-local constitutive relationships are considered both for mortar and bricks, adopting a damage-friction law for the mortar and an isotropic damage model for the bricks, both accounting for tensile failure mechanisms.