Determination of Effective Stiffness Characteristics of Unreinforced Masonry Using Numerical Homogenization

The article presents a homogenization method for determining the effective properties of brickwork through numerical modeling. The selection of representative volume elements (RVEs) for characterizing masonry is justified. Numerical experiments demonstrate that reliable stress-strain data require testing a fragment of nine brick rows (four bricks wide). A nine-row stretcher-bond fragment serves as a representative component for multi-row brickwork of any configuration, enabling deformation analysis without large-scale experiments. A method is proposed to determine the stiff characteristics of unreinforced masonry as an anisotropic homogeneous body using numerical loading simulations. The stiffness coefficient matrix is derived from finite element analysis (FEA) under compressive and shear loads. Comparisons between heterogeneous and homogenized models confirm the method’s accuracy (<5% error), bridging micromechanics and structural analysis.