Masonry is a construction material widely used around the world. Although its poor behavior under seismic loads has been extensively reported, masonry is used in earthquake prone areas mainly due to its relatively low cost. In order to improve the seismic performance of this type of structures, it is important to understand the pre and post peak behavior of masonry under seismic loads. In this context, both experimental and numerical approaches are needed. Masonry is a composite material made of bricks and mortar. Due to large number of influence factors, such as
anisotropy of bricks, dimension of bricks, joint width, material properties, arrangement of joints and quality of workmanship, the behavior of masonry is very variable and this makes modeling difficult. Several attempts have been done to model masonry subjected to in-plane loads [1,2,3]. However, the results are so far limited. This paper reports the initial results of a masonry model using the Applied Element Method (AEM) [4].
P. Mayorca and K. Meguro (2003), Modeling Masonry Structures Using The Applied Element Method, Seisan-Kenkyu, 55.6, 2003.