Modelling of Connection Failure in Seismic Assessment of Masonry Structures

In recent years, numerical modelling is increasingly being used to assess the seismic capacity of masonry buildings. In numerical models, the connections between structural walls are commonly considered as rigid, but in some cases this assumption may be inaccurate. Especially, this research focuses on the terraced houses built in the Netherlands after 1980s which are characterized by vertical glued joints between transverse masonry walls. Since the premature shear failure of these connections may cause a significant reduction of seismic capacity of the entire structures, different numerical approaches to represent the nonlinear behaviour of the joint are investigated and compared. The results of this work show that the strength of the vertical connection strongly affects the capacity of the structure, and the choice of constitutive law plays a crucial role in the robustness and accuracy of the model. In addition, a comparison between the numerical and experimental results is presented and discussed.