AN EFFICIENT APPROACH FOR PUSHOVER ANALYSIS OF UNREINFORCED MASONRY (URM) STRUCTURES

This article presents a new method for the calculation of the moment-rotation (M-θ) curves of URM elements using an analytical phenomenogical closed form solution for flexure, combined with a hybrid analytical-statistical model for shear. These are used to define the constitutive law of nonlinear springs located at the areas of lumped inelasticity of an equivalent frame model. The method constitutes an analytical design/assessment tool, to be used by the practicing engineer, for the pushover analysis of URM buildings. The proposed procedure is implemented as a pre-processor to a commercial nonlinear software codes capable of static pushover analysis using the point hinge approach.