FAILURE CRITERION FOR STRUCTURAL MASONRY BASED ON CRITICAL PLANE APPROACH

The paper presents a macroscopic failure criterion for structural masonry. This criterion is derived within the framework of the critical plane approach. First, a general discussion is provided examining the performance of this framework in the context of classical linear as well as nonlinear criteria. Subsequently, a bilinear form of failure criterion for structural masonry is proposed incorporating a set of distribution functions for describing the spatial variation of material properties. Extensive numerical study is performed examining the behavior in biaxial compression-tension and compression-compression regimes for different orientations of the sample relative to the loading direction. The results are compared with the available experimental data.