Two parameters confinement model for clay brick masonry

Modeling of masonry confinement has been usually derived from concrete confinement, which was deeply tested in the last decades. However concrete and masonry have some crucial differences, e.g., ordinary concrete performance can be usually fully defined by the cylindrical compressive strength, while masonry does not. In the present work, a failure criterion is considered on a solid mechanics base. Such criteria are useful not only to introduce non-uniform stress states, as those developed in non-axisymmetric confined elements, but also to be implemented in FEM. The validity of the adopted failure criterion has been checked against actively confined clay brick masonry and a database of passive confinement tests available in the scientific literature.