Height-to-Length Ratio Effect on the Response of Unreinforced Masonry Wall Subjected to Vertical Load Using Detailed-Micro Modeling Approach

This paper aimed to investigate the effect of the height-to-length ratio of unreinforced masonry (URM) walls when loaded by a vertical load. The finite element (FE) method was implemented for modeling and analysis of URM wall. In this paper, ABAQUS, FE software with implicit solver was used to model and analysis URM walls subjected to a vertical load. In order to ensure the validity of Detailed Micro Model (DMM) in predicting the behavior of URM walls under vertical load, the results of the proposed model are compared with experimental results. Load-displacement relationship of the proposed numerical model is found of a good agreement with that of the published experimental results. Evidence shows that load-displacement curve obtained from the FE model has almost the same trend of experimental one. A case study of URM walls was conducted to investigate the influence of the wall aspect ratio on its capacity and stress distribution due to a vertical load using DMM approach. In this paper, curves obtained that show a relationship between height level and generated compressive stress of walls with different aspects ratios and the strength of each URM wall and the DMM technique that has been utilized for numerical simulation.