Assessment of masonry structures under lateral loads via 3D rigid block limit analysis

The assessment of masonry block structures under lateral loads can be efficiently carried out using computational limit analysis for the evaluation of the collapse load factor and the corresponding failure mechanism. In this study a formulation based on mathematical programming is presented to discuss the accu-racy and the computational efficiency of the proposed modeling approach. The formulation adopts a rigid body modeling approach and uses a concave model for contact interfaces, for which a no-tension and friction-al behaviour is assumed. That allows to formulate the limit analysis problem as a second order cone pro-gramming problem and to take into account non-associative behaviour under sliding failure by means of a simple iterative procedure to save CPU time. An application to a case study from the literature is presented and discussed also on the basis of the results of experimental investigation.