Abstract Summary
Explosions generated from the detonation of unconfined explosive-charges produce high-intensity impulsive pressures. These pressures can induce excessive stresses over masonry buildings and therefore threaten their structural safety. Masonry as a construction material is commonly found in historical structures and widely used in modern constructions around the world. Masonry is a composite, anisotropic and brittle material, and these characteristics bring a special layer of complexity to the numerical simulations of their response, especially under extreme impulsive loads such as blast loads. To ensure realistic simulation results, all pertinent characteristics of masonry, including their response to high-strain rates of loading, should be accounted for. Moreover, the attributes of the impulsive loading need to be accurately considered. To this end, this study employs a mesoscale modelling approach that can include the geometry of masonry structures and the texture of brick units both in-plane and out-of-plane leading to a better understanding of their response. As brick-mortar interfaces are, mostly, the weak planes along which cracks can initiate and propagate through masonry, these planes of weakness mainly control the response of unreinforced masonry (URM) structural elements. The results of a series of parametric analyses to varying blast loads intensity, with time and standoff distances, are carried out and the effect of brick-mortar interface parameters and loading parameters upon the response of URM Walls is investigated. Important conclusions are offered on the practical implementation of complex numerical simulations and the range of demand parameters that can be considered more damaging to masonry structural subassemblies.
