Experimental and Numerical Studies on Ultimate Load Behaviour of Brick Masonry

The present work brings out the studies on ultimate load behavior of brick masonry subjected to compression and shear-loading. The work composed of both the experimental and numerical investigations, aimed at contributing to the better understanding of the knowledge on the behavior of brick masonry structures under monotonic loading. Two brick masonry specimens have been tested up to ultimate load and the structural response in terms of the load, deflections and strains has been investigated. Due to the complexity, time and expense involved in the experimental investigations on brick masonry, limited number of experimental studies have been conducted and further, numerical studies have been carried out to simulate the experimental tests by suitably adopting the appropriate constitute models for the materials used. The responses and the failure load behaviour obtained from nonlinear numerical models developed are found to be in good agreement with the experimentally obtained results. The proposed numerical models can easily be adopted for further studies on the structural component made using brick masonry considering various geometric configurations, material disposition, loading conditions etc. © 2016, The Institution of Engineers (India).