Jacopo Scacco, Luís C. Silva, Graça Vasconcelos, Gabriele Milani and Paulo B. Lourenço
Jacopo Scacco, Ph.D. Candidate, Politecnico di Milano, Department of Architecture Built Environment and Construction Engineering ABC, Piazza Leonardo da Vinci 32, 20133 Milan, Italy, jacopo.scacco@polimi.it
Luís C. Silva, Assistant Professor, ISISE, Faculty of Engineering, University Lusófona de Humanidades e Tecnologias, Campo Grande, 1749-024 Lisbon, Portugal, luis.silva@ulusofona.pt
Graça Vasconcelos, Assistant Professor, ISISE, Department of Civil Engineering, University of Minho, Azurém, 4800-058 Guimarães, Portugal, graca@civil.uminho.pt
Gabriele Milani, Full Professor, Politecnico di Milano, Department of Architecture Built Environment and Construction Engineering ABC, Piazza Leonardo da Vinci 32, 20133 Milan, Italy, gabriele.milani@polimi.it
Paulo B. Lourenço, Full Professor, ISISE, Department of Civil Engineering, University of Minho, Azurém, 4800-058 Guimarães, Portugal, pbl@civil.uminho.pt
ABSTRACT
The study addresses the mechanical analysis of unreinforced masonry (URM) walls through a numerical strategy based on a micro-modeling approach. The study includes the structural
evaluation URM walls via quasi-static (‘pushover’) analyses. Masonry walls are made of clay brick units and weak mortar joints within an English-bond arrangement. The mechanical properties of the latter components try to give a fair representation of the ones found within the so-called ‘placa’ buildings. ‘Placa’ buildings have been mainly erected between the 1930s and 1960s and represent an important part of the Portuguese building. Its structure is characterized by being of a mixed type, i.e. composed of masonry walls and reinforced concrete (RC) slabs. The seismic response of this building type is affected by the increase of inertial loads – when compared to URM masonry buildings – due to the presence of concrete slabs. Hence it is important to draw strengthening solutions that are easy to implement and guarantee the required seismic capacity. With the view of future tests on reinforced structures, this work wants to
provide a deep discussion about the best suitable experimental setup to design for the preliminary tests on the unreinforced scenario. Several hypotheses are explored on a URM scaled configuration representative of ‘placa’ buildings by changing the geometry, the boundary conditions and the load applied. Useful indications about the parameters governing the global behavior are provided to avoid at the experimental stage any rocking of the structures.
KEYWORDS: ‘placa’ buildings, out-of-plane, URM, strengthening, English-bond, pushover
