ABSTRACT
In many cases, masonry structures are subjected to loads that form cracks. Elasticity and damage in quasibrittle structures such as plain and reinforced concrete structures can be modeled with the peridynamic theory, proposed by Stewart Silling in 2000 and 2007. To model these structures, lattice hybrid models with brittle beam elements where used to model concrete, where cracks were expected to appear. One of the problems with lattice models is that they fail to adequately describe compressive behavior of quasibrittle materials. Another shortcoming of lattice and particle models is that they are highly demanding of computational power. Molecular dynamics may be, in some cases an appropriate tool for analyzing microcracks in quasibrittle materials in compression, but molecular dynamics becomes infeasible at scales larger than a few million atoms. In most cases, cracks form in the brick mortar joints, and concrete blocks or bricks can be assumed to have a uniform displacement field. This allows us to use the peridynamic finite element model, which is an improvement over discrete lattice models. This model assumes a continuous displacement field within each finite element, with displacement discontinuities allowed to develop between finite elements. The objective of this work is to model cracks in masonry walls with the peridynamic model. The peridynamic finite element model is shown to be much more computer time- and memory-efficient than the similar discrete particle-based models. Results show that this implementation appears to be more computationally efficient than particle or lattice models.
