A Fresh Angle to Approach the Dynamics of Masonry Wall–Like Structures

Masonry buildings form a significant part of the historic architectural heritage of cities around the world. These structures, often located in areas of high seismic activity, are notably susceptible to earthquake excitation. Therefore, to accurately represent their behaviour and, more crucially, to design seismic retrofit solutions, various numerical techniques have been introduced in the literature. Despite the plethora of methods provided, the major part refers to the no-tension model introduced by Heyman, by assuming the Limit Analysis’ hypotheses. However, using the assumption that masonry walls consist of rigid blocks interacting through no-tension interfaces often yields inconsistent results due to possible interpenetration of elements and, to avoid this, geometric compatibility is repeatedly checked in dynamic simulations. This sometimes makes it necessary to stop the analysis and restart it with –somewhat– potentially arbitrary boundary conditions. To address these issues, we provide a fresh angle to approach the dynamics of masonry wall–like structures that employs well-established hyperelastic and friction laws at the interfaces between blocks to ensure mechanical consistency. This strategy allows for the reduction of the computational burdens and automatically guarantees the geometric compatibility without any additional and somehow artificial constraint conditions.