Strength Capacity of Masonry Wall Structures by the Equivalent Frame Method

Abstract

The structural assessment of large traditional and historical masonry buildings poses significant challenges due to the need for modeling complex geometries and nonlinear material behavior. Although sophisticated methods have been developed for the nonlinear analysis of such structural systems—mostly based on two- or three-dimensional finite element modeling—they can hardly be used for practical purposes due to very large computational requirements. This paper presents an alternate method, specifically developed for efficiently simulating the service and ultimate responses of structural systems composed of masonry load-bearing walls. Its efficiency stems from the technique adopted to model the wall panels, based on treating them as equivalent frame systems composed of one-dimensional elements. In addition, biaxial constitutive equations are included to account for the relevant aspects of the nonlinear response of the material. In spite of the numerical efficiency of the method, it is able to obtain accurate predictions of the overall response of masonry buildings and their failure condition. The method has been successfully used for the analysis of actual historical large constructions and for simulating possible operations of repair and restoration.