Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Computational Methods in Structural Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering (COMPDYN 2015)
This paper investigates the behaviour of small square masonry subassembly, wallets , subject to axial compression, involving their crack pattern and the shear stress-shear strain curves. Masonry and mortar were discretized with quadrilateral finite elements with embedded discontinuities, which have three degrees of freedom per node. The constitutive behaviours of blocks, bricks and mortar consider the softening deformation after reaching a failure surface. The numerical modelling of experimental tests for combined masonry wallets were performed in the Finite Element Analysis Program (FEAP). The computed shear stress-shear strain curves with finite elements with embedded discontinuities showed a fairly good agreement in terms of the initial stiffness, strength, ultimate load and dissipative behaviour; also, the computed cracking patter is congruent with the experimental one.