Failure Criterion for Structural Masonry based on Critical Plane Approach

The paper presents a macroscopic failure criterion for structural masonry. This criterion is derived within the framework of the critical plane approach. First, a general discussion is provided examining the performance of this framework in the context of classical linear as well as nonlinear criteria. Subsequently, a bilinear form of failure criterion for structural masonry is proposed incorporating a set of distribution functions for describing the spatial variation of material properties. Extensive numerical study is performed examining the behavior in biaxial compressiontension and compressioncompression regimes for different orientations of the sample relative to the loading direction. The results are compared with the available experimental data.