Design of the optimal fiber-reinforcement for masonry structures via topology optimization

The contribution discusses three sets of numerical results, addressing the fiber-reinforcement of some benchmark masonry walls. The optimal reinforcement layouts are found to be affected by the choice of the masonry strength criterion only to a limited extent, as far as failure in the masonry element is mainly due to tensile stresses. Contrary to intuition, placing the reinforcing fibers along the direction of the principal tensile stresses in masonry is also found to be not necessarily the most effective solution, for certain geometries and load conditions.