Failure of masonry buildings is considered as the major cause of the large number of casualties during the past earthquakes around the world. Masonry constructions are still in practice even in highly seismic regions. Understanding of masonry wall behavior under lateral load is important to develop proper mitigation measures applied to existing buildings for retrofitting and to new construction for setting of design guidelines. In this paper, attempt is made to apply a newly developed numerical tool, Applied Element Method (AEM), for the analysis of masonry building structures with detailed failure process comprising crack occurrences, their evolution, block separation and material loss before collapse. The study gives an insight into the failure mechanics, which is important, not only for the strength assessment, estimation of maximum dissipation level and collapse, process, but also for the identification of weak point locations, their extent and force transfer paths. Performance of the application of AEM is evaluated with available experimental results of masonry wall under in-plane cyclic loading. Comparison is made between observed behavior in experiment and numerical prediction for crack pattern, their evolution and hysteretic behavior. Application is further extended to numerical simulation of walls under different configurations to observe the effect of wall aspect ratio, opening locations and their size and boundary conditions.
Pandey, B. and Meguro, K. Simulation Of Brick Masonry Wall Behavior Under Inplane Lateral Loading Using Applied Element Method. 13th World Conference on Earthquake Engineering Vancouver, B.C., Canada. August 1-6, 2004. Paper No. 1664.