New trends in the analysis of masonry structures (Q1202546)

In this work the author investigates the new trends in the analysis of masonry structures. As investigation reveals, the modern theory of masonry structures has been set up on the hypothesis of non-tension behavior. This hypothesis gives rise to the inequalities which have to be satisfied by the stress and to the kinematic behavior characteristics of media which can be classified as lying between solids and fluids. The structure of the masonry material consists of particles reacting elastically only when it is in contact. An examination of plane-stress problem leads the author to define three different subdomains with null ``regular'' or ``non-regular'' principal stress tensors, respectively. As the boundaries of such subdomains are not known a priori, the problem can be classified as a free boundary value problem. The analysis concerns mainly with the subdomains where the stress tensor is ``non-regular'' and a non-regularity condition \(\text{det }\sigma=0\) is added on the equilibrium equations. This condition makes the stress problem ``isostatic'' and leads to a violation of Saint-Venant's compliance conditions on strains. Hence, there is a need to introduce a strain tensor, not related to the stress tensor, which can be decomposed into an extensional component and a shearing component, and it is proved that such strains, of the class \(\gamma\sigma^ c\), are similar to those of the theory of plastic flow. From the point of view of computational analysis, the anelastic strains are considered as given distorsions; they are computed by means of the Haar-Karman principle, modified for computerization purposes by an idea of Prager and Hodge. This work is quite good and may be interesting for those researchers working in the area of old masonry buildings.