FINITE ELEMENT ANALYSIS OF ROOF CRACKS IN MASONRY BUILDING WITH THE INFLUENCE OF DIFFERENT VERTICAL COMPRESSION

Inclined cracks on the top of masonry walls are always the important issue troubling designers and constructors.Previous studies hold that the cause of the cracks is temperature variation and differential settlement of foundation and so on.From the angle of different vertical compression,this paper presents a numerical analysis of masonry wall bearing different vertical load by finite element method.The fracture distribution and morphological characteristics of cracks have good agreement with theoretical analysis and test results.The simulated results show that the theory of different vertical compression is correct and the feasibility of FEM method is validated.Masonry with construction measures has been compared with that without construction measures in order to investigate effective method to this type of cracks.