Abstract

Abstract

The equivalent frame model takes into account the shear and bending mechanisms that take place in piers and spandrels through plastic hinges. It represents a good compromise between accuracy and computational burden in the analysis of complex masonry walls. For the purposes of dynamic analysis, in addition to the hysteretic behaviour of the plastic hinges, it is also necessary to introduce their degradation of strength and stiffness. This study presents a macroelement model for piers and spandrels in which the bending mechanism is described by two hinges at the ends of the macroelement, and the shear mechanism by a shear link. They are characterized by a hysteretic behaviour with progressive plasticity, described by the Bouc-Wen model, and by degradation of strength and stiffness. Degradation is described through a damage parameter, which governs both strength and stiffness decay, and a flexibility increase parameter, which only governs stiffness reduction. In this way it is possible to independently control both strength and stiffness degradation. The model is applied to simulate experimental tests on panels, highlighting a good agreement with the experimental results.

Abstract

Brick masonry is considered as one of the old construction materials, and several cultural heritage assets are made of unreinforced masonry (URM), which is susceptible to earthquakes due to its brittle behavior. The equivalent frame method (EFM) is a nonlinear modeling method widely utilized for the seismic analysis of URM buildings with lower computational efforts than finite and discrete element methods. In this study, three macroelements, including the unified method (UM), composite spring method (CSM), and double modified multiple vertical line element model (DM-MVLEM), were utilized to model three case studies. The first case study is a full-scale two-story URM wall that was tested by applying the cyclic prescribed displacements, and two other case studies were developed by changing the configuration of openings. The second case study is with short piers, and weak spandrels exist in the third model. The efficiency of the methods in terms of the accuracy of the pushover results, prediction of damage patterns, and duration of the incremental dynamic analysis (IDA) are discussed. Finally, seismic fragility curves are provided to compare the IDA results.