AN ORIGINAL DISCRETE MACRO-ELEMENT METHOD FOR THE ANALYSIS OF HISTORICAL STRUCTURES

A reliable numerical model capable of simulating the nonlinear behaviour of historical masonry structures is fundamental for their structural assessment and the identification of possible retrofitting strategies. Within the framework of numerical simulations, models based on the Finite Element (FE) method provide a good prediction of the seismic performance of this type of structures. However, the application of this computational tool is mainly oriented to research purposes since it is computationally demanding and needs advanced user expertise to define appropriate mechanical properties and to interpret the numerical results correctly. In this sense, alternative practically oriented models have been developed aiming at overcoming these limitations. Despite this, most of these models focuses on the evaluation of the in-plane response of masonry walls, assuming a box behaviour of the structure and neglecting the out-of-plane failure mechanisms. This paper presents a simplified Discrete Macro-Element modelling approach for the simulation of the seismic response of historical masonry structures. The adopted discrete elements, used at the macro-scale, possess an internal deformability, and their reciprocal interaction is governed by distributed interfaces which incorporate the mechanical nonlinear behaviour of the adjacent elements. In this study, this numerical strategy, implemented in a dedicated software environment, is applied to a real-scale residential building through nonlinear static analyses compared with results available in the literature. The results obtained from this study are in good agreement with the ones obtained by continuum FE models, demonstrating the applicability of this strategy for practical purposes with a significant reduction of the computational cost.