Masonry patterns' influence on the damage assessment of URM walls: current and future trends

Abstract

While the influence of the component strength on the structural behaviour of Historic Masonry Structures (HMS) is relatively well studied, few studies have investigated masonry textures. Such a research gap is due to the actual difficulty of finding parameters that correlate masonry patterns and structural performances. This paper presents a comprehensive review of the existing geometric measures for irregular masonry patterns, highlighting the gaps and possible future trends. Special attention is paid to the Non-destructive Tests (NDT) for surveying masonry textures and algorithms to generate block-based numerical models artificially. Finally, a numerical investigation underlines how masonry textures generated considering quality indexes present more consistent results.