An Interface Model Including Cracks and Roughness Applied to Masonry
RESEARCH ARTICLE

An Interface Model Including Cracks and Roughness Applied to Masonry

The Open Civil Engineering Journal 29 Oct 2014 RESEARCH ARTICLE DOI: 10.2174/1874149501408010263

Abstract

In this paper an interface model accounting for roughness and micro-cracks is presented and applied to masonry-like structures. The model is consistently derived by coupling a homogenization approach and arguments of asymptotic analyses. A numerical procedure is introduced and numerical results, based on a finite element formulation, are successfully compared with experimental data , obtained on masonry samples undergoing to shear tests. Finally, a parametric numerical analysis is proposed, highlighting the influence of the roughness features on the interface response.

Keywords: Asymptotic analysis, masonry structures micro-cracks, roughness, soft interface.