Experimental and numerical assessment of in-plane monotonic response of ancient mortar brick masonry

The structural assessment of extant historical buildings constructed using ancient or traditional masonry is a critical research area for seismic retrofitting. In this study, the in-plane characteristics of the brick masonry of ancient mortars including mud, lime-mud, and lime-sand are investigated experimentally and numerically. For this purpose, several brick masonry prisms are constructed using these mortars. The brick and mortar properties are selected to match those of surviving heritage masonry buildings. Moreover, brick masonry prisms composed of cement and cement-lime (“bastard”) mortars are constructed for comparison. The in-plane responses of these masonry prisms are examined through compression, shear, and tension tests. Failure of brick masonry structure occurs frequently in mortar joints owing to its nonhomogeneous in-plane behavior. The experimental shear and tension responses of masonry joints are used to develop an appropriate contact behavior that can be used for modeling ancient masonry structure in Abaqus FEM software. The experimental tests on masonry prisms are modeled in the software, and the results of the analysis have exhibited reasonable accordance with those of the actual tests.