1 PhD Student, Centre for Infrastructure Performance and Reliability, The University of Newcastle, NSW, 2308, Australia c3124120@uon.edu.au
2 Associate Professor, Centre for Infrastructure Performance and Reliability, The University of Newcastle, NSW, 2308, Australia Mark.Masia@newcastle.edu.au
3 Professor and Director, Centre for Infrastructure Performance and Reliability, The University of Newcastle, NSW, 2308, Australia Mark.Stewart@newcastle.edu.au
4 Conjoint Professor, Centre for Infrastructure Performance and Reliability, The University of Newcastle, NSW, 2308, Australia spl@bigpond.net.au
ABSTRACT
The flexural bond strength of unreinforced masonry (URM) is a key material property affecting the wall out-of-plane lateral load capacity. It is well known that the unit flexural bond strength (defined here as the flexural strength of the brick to lower mortar bed joint associated with any given masonry unit (brick)) varies considerably between units, and that this spatial variability might significantly affect the structural performance and reliability of URM walls in flexure. The paper develops a computational method to predict the strength for URM walls subject to one-way vertical bending considering unit-to-unit spatial variability of flexural bond strength. We characterise the probability distributions of wall strength and examine how spatial variability in unit flexural bond strength affects the variability of first cracking load, second cracking load and peak load and behaviour of clay brick URM walls. This is done using 3-D nonlinear Finite Element Analyses and stochastic analysis in the form of Monte Carlo simulations. Varying COVs (0.1, 0.3 and 0.5) of unit bond strength are considered. The mean and variance of wall strength are estimated to show the effect of spatial variability of bond strength on wall strength.
KEYWORDS: stochastic, masonry, bond strength, spatial variability, structural reliability
199.pdf
