An orthotropic macromechanical model with damage for the analysis of masonry structures

The in-plane response of masonry walls is analyzed by using a novel macromechanical damage model. This is able to capture the directional mechanical properties characterizing regular masonry textures by adopting an orthotropic description of the elastic and inelastic behavior. A damage matrix, defined in terms of damage independent scalar variables, is introduced in the constitutive law to describe and distinguish the stiffness degradation due to tensile, compressive and shear states along masonry natural axes, fixed as the parallel and normal direction to bed joints. The model is implemented in a finite element procedure, where the mesh-dependency drawback is overcome by adopting a classical nonlocal integral approach. Comparisons of numerical and experimental results are performed to test the model capability of describing influence of the orientation of applied stresses with respect to bed joints direction. Moreover, a numerical study is conducted with reference to different masonry textures with the aim of evaluating the effect of bricks and mortar relative arrangement on the elastic properties of the homogenized material. Finally, the response of a large scale masonry wall subjected to seismic loads is studied and the obtained pushover curve is compared with those collected from existing literature models.