ON THE UNIT CELL BOUNDARY VALUE PROBLEM WITH MESHLESS FORMULATION FOR MASONRY STRUCTURES

In a generic multi-scale computational homogenization (CH) procedure, the crucial point is the definition and the solution of the Unit Cell (UC) Boundary Value Problem (BVP). The main aspects to be chosen for the formulation of the UC BVP are: (i) geometry; (ii) bound- ary conditions (BCs); (iii) material models; (iv) numerical approximation techniques. All these components play a key-role in the efficiency of the multi-scale procedure. In the present study, the UC BVP is formulated for running bond masonry according to a dis- placement based variational formulation, where the material of the blocks is considered indefi- nitely elastic and the mortar joints are simulated by zero-thickness e…