Research Information System
Teknik Dergi/Technical Journal of Turkish Chamber of Civil Engineers, vol.15, no.3, pp.3249-3265, 2004 (Scopus)
The design of masonry structures is based on the compressive strength of the masonry. Compressive strength of masonry depends on several factors such as block strength, geometry of the hollow blocks, mortar properties, mortar bedding. Therefore, tests of masonry blocks under compression are performed to obtain the strength and other design criteria related to the compressive strength. There is no unique experimental method for testing prisms. Researches demonstrate that tests on prisms laid in stack bond with face shell bedding with h/t ratio in the range of 2-5 give results that are acceptably realistic. The linear elastic finite element analyses of these tests were performed to study the prisms' behavior in detail. In this study, the nonlinear-finite element analyses of 3-course block masonry prisms by using LUSAS program and the Drucker-Prager yield criterion which was shown to be appropriate for modeling of concrete behavior in previous studies, have been carried out successively. Cohesion which is one of parameters of the Drucker-Prager yield criterion, has been obtained from three dimensional finite element analyses of several experiments for hollow blocks in the literature. Results show that the performed finite element analysis can predict the behavior of masonry prisms under axial loading with reasonable accuracy.