TNO Building and Construction Research, also Eindhoven University of Technology
PO Box 49, NL-2600 AA Delft, The Netherlands
SUMMARY
The flexural strength of masonry parallel to the bed joint depends on the geometry of the cross section, tensile bond strength, fracture energy, stiffness of units and of mortar joints. In experiments, tensile bond strength and fracture energy determined on relatively small specimens, show a large scatter. The influence of their variation upon the variation of the flexural strength of masonry was theoretically investigated in a probabilistic way. This was done by modelling a part of masonry with solids and interface elements and randomly submitting values for tensile bond strength and fracture energy to parts of the joints. In total over 200 non-linear analyses were carried out for 16 different ways of submitting the random strength and fracture energy values using different kind of correlation’s between parameters and different values for coefficients of variation.
From the research it was concluded that the characteristic strength of masonry cannot be chosen larger than the characteristic strength of relatively small specimens, although it slightly increases with increasing crack length. The characteristic flexural strength of masonry might be take higher in case of cracks that originate in large panels and that are restrained by surrounding uncracked masonry.
KEYWORDS: Flexural Bond Strength, Tensile Bond Strength, Probability, Distribution, Variability, Numerical Analysis
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