Author

E. M. F. NAGUIB Cairo University, Egypt
and PROFESSOR G. T. SUTER
Carleton University, Canada

Abstract

To help understand masonry cracking problems, study of the stress field inside a brick unit and a mortar joint under different types of loading is important. This paper is part of an ongoing research programme at Carleton University to explore these stress fields. The objective of the present work is to obtain the magnitude and distribution of stresses in brick and mortar in a brick masonry finite element (FE) model. Due to the complexity of masonry, a three dimensional (3-D) FE analysis is utilized. Resultant stresses are shown to be higher than those obtained by other researchers using 2-D FE or simple modelling. The lateral tensile stress in the brick is found to be about 14% of the applied vertical stress, and the lateral compressive stress in the mortar is found to be about 22% of the applied vertical stress. Vertical stresses in the brick and mortar are found to be about 1-2 and 1-04 times the vertically applied stress, respectively.