A study of masonry walls by boundary element formulation using homogenization procedure

Abstract

This work presents an application of a Boundary Element Method (BEM) formulation for orthotropy analysis, with focus on homogenization of the material elastic properties on masonry. The formulation is elaborated for elastic-linear analysis, using isotropic fundamental solution, in which it is necessary to take account of orthotropy in this type of structure. The orthotropy is considered by expressing a residual elastic tensor as the difference of the orthotropic and isotropic elastic tensors and cell’s discretization of the domain must be considered for internal variables. The paper presents the integral formulation, the algebraic procedure and homogenization application. Some examples are shown to validate the formulation.