Ricerc@Sapienza

In the out-of-plane assessment of rocking walls, a relevant and yet uncertain aspect is the influence of energy dissipated during motion due to impacts and restraints, such as a floor or tie rods. Therefore, in situ rocking tests on unrestrained and restrained unreinforced masonry walls, made of composite (rubble + blockwork) masonry, were performed and analyzed. The restraint is given by steel springs of assigned stiffness, simulating a floor connected to full-scale (4 × 1 × 0.6 m3) specimens from a dismantling building.

A nonlocal damage-plastic model, accounting for the main nonlinear mechanisms characterizing masonry mechanical behavior, is introduced in a finite element framework and used to analyze the out-of-plane response of a tuff masonry wall. A simple structural scheme is considered where the wall is completely restrained at the base and free at the top. First, the wall response is numerically studied under monotonic and cyclic quasi-static conditions, then the exploration is extended to dynamic field.