Nonlinear analysis of masonry walls: parametric studies B. Leftheris, C.P. Providakis Department of Engineering Sciences, Technical University of Crete, GR-73100, Chania, Greece ABSTRACT In recent years considerable progress has been made on the problem of strengthening masonry walls. The limitations of the analysis models which are available to the designers depend on the difficulties in describing the material behaviour and its strength. In this paper the Finite Element Method is applied to the nonlinear analysis of masonry walls in order to evaluate the response of the wall for two medium level intervention techniques and to discuss the results of the intervention. INTRODUCTION The ideal approach to the problem would have been the analytical calculation of the time history inelastic response of a masonry wall for dead loads and horizontally imposed loads caused by an earthquake excitation. However, even today such an approach to the problem seems for many reasons, that are mentioned below, to be very difficult: The solid state discretization of such a complicated, huge and massive structure as a masonry walls isvery difficult. Stress - strain inelastic triaxial relations cannot be easily adopted as a masonry wall is a unilateral and orthotropic structure with varying orthotropy and material properties from point to point. Additionally, the descending branch in the stress - strain constitutive law, necessary for cycling loadings, cannot be estimated in a justified way. The loading path which plays an important role in inelastic analysis cannot be easily taken into account for a masonry wall with a history of many centuries. The existing cracks due to foundation settlements, various restrains or accidental actions in the past(i.e. earthquakes) cannot be easily taken into account in the analysis of the existing structure and what is more difficult it cannot analytically, be reproduced in the successive loading steps up to failure. Transactions on the Built Environment vol 4, © 1993 WIT Press, www.witpress.com, ISSN 1743-3509
Nonlinear analysis of masonry walls: parametric studies
Jun 19, 2023
Welcome message from author
This document is posted to help you gain knowledge. Please leave a comment to let me know what you think about it! Share it to your friends and learn new things together.
Related Documents
