Anisotropic damage effects in masonry walls

This paper refers to the characterization of plane masonry behaviour under the assumption of plane stress. Masonry may be seen as a two-phase (bricks and mortar) periodic anisotropic material with complex macroscopic behaviour due to the possible occurrence of cracking in each of the phases. Non-linear constitutive equations have thus to be used in order to realistically represent masonry structures. Most existing macroscopic models defined for such materials are by essence phenomenological. This leads to weakly motivated frameworks and rather complex models, especially if one wants to account for material symmetry evolution due to cracking. The aim of this paper is to identify a simple set of damage mechanics variables for the constituents that could be used in homogenization procedures to infer the overall behaviour of the material from its mesostructural features (geometrical arrangement and mechanical properties of the constituents). Based on unit cell computations, it is shown that scalar damage meso-models allow to obtain realistic damage patterns encountered in experiments. Results suggest that at the meso-scale, it is possible to use a scalar damage model for the individual phases which naturally leads to the desired anisotropy evolution into the macroscopic descriptions. This macroscopic anisotropy evolution is illustrated using a numerical homogenization procedure to identify the degraded stiffness associated to damage patterns. The influence of variations in the constituent characteristics is also correctly captured as illustrated for some of the loading schemes.