Method of deformation analysis for composite structures of soils and masonry stones

The coupled numerical manifold method (NMM) and discontinuous deformation analysis (DDA) are enhanced to simulate deformations of continuous soil and discontinuous masonry structures. An elasto-plastic NMM-DDA is formulated that incorporates elasto-plastic constitutive laws into incremental forms of the equation of motion. A node-based uniform strain element is applied to avoid volumetric locking, which often occurs in conventional NMM-DDA. The proposed method is applied to three fundamental boundary value problems: a beam bending problem, a bearing capacity problem of a footing, and a bearing capacity problem of a masonry structure. The method is verified through comparisons with conventional solutions.