ABSTRACT
The important advances of the last decades in the field of computational mechanics and the increase of the numerical methods applicable to the study of masonry constructions have resulted in a better understanding of the structural behaviour of masonry. This chapter presents an improved computational model for the analysis of masonry structures based on continuum mechanics finite element approaches. It utilises constitutive model for the numerical simulation of damage. The chapter also presents the crack-tracking algorithm, along with a novel methodology for crack-tracking algorithms that allows the simulation of damage starting at the interior of the discretized domain. The chapter provides a macro-modelling finite element approach to simulate realistically localized flexural and shear cracking in masonry. The validity of the algorithm is checked through the comparison with an experimental result on a full-scale masonry frame.
