Development of William-Warnke failure criteria based on experimental studies of scaled masonry materials

Due to the great importance of traditional structures and masonry materials and their high application, the effective parameters in the load-bearing capacity of these structural forms should be examined. In order to study the behaviour of building materials in traditional buildings and structures, due to the high cost and time-consuming laboratory studies, it is necessary to use software methods with accurate failure criteria. To achieve more acceptable and realistic results in the analysis of brick masonry structures, the Willam-Warnke fracture criterion, which is specific to brittle materials, is generally used. In this paper, the aim is to obtain the Willam-Warnke fracture criterion parameters for the combination of brick and mortar materials in macro modelling. For this purpose, with the help of laboratory studies on the combined materials of brick and mortar, the mechanical properties of these materials have been obtained. Finally, in order to validate the obtained parameters, these parameters were included in the numerical modelling of a semi-circular arch of building materials and compared with laboratory results. The results show that the developed parameters of Willam-Warnke fracture criterion predict the behaviour of building materials with a maximum error of about ten percent and a suitable and acceptable agreement is observed between the results of the analytical and laboratory model.