Fourier-based incremental homogenisation of coupled unilateral damage–plasticity model for masonry structures

In structural analysis of large masonry structures, nondemanding computation effort, numerical stability and simplified model assembly and meshing often have a higher priority over precise details of local stress or strain responses. This paper presents the development of a Fourier-based incremental homogenisation technique, where the macro–micro transformations of mechanical variables are derived by incremental variational problems to minimise the potential energy in representative volume elements (RVEs) with respect to local fluctuating displacement fields expanded in Fourier series. In addition to the proposed homogenisation technique, a unilateral damage–plasticity constitutive model for mortar joints in the RVE is developed within the framework of thermomechanics, which accounts for the stiffness and strength degradation (or recovery) due to the transverse crack opening/closing in the mortar joints. The numerical solution for the homogenisation problem and the performances of the proposed coupled-damage plastic mode and Fourier-based homogenisation scheme verified by detailed case studies are presented. It has been shown that the computational effort of the analysis with the proposed modelling technique can be considerably reduced by more than 20% as compared with that of the discrete modelling technique.