Numerical calculation model for the global analysis of concrete structures with masonry walls

Resumen

The numerical simulation in the field of civil engineering, while widely used in structural design, has not benefited from the full potential offered by new technologies for the analysis and design of composite materials within the framework of the finite element, technologies that are already present in industries such as automotive, aerospace and shipbuilding. This thesis is based on the numerical simulation, and emerges as the need to combine and improve existing technologies in the field of finite element analysis for composite materials, to assess the overall structural behavior of reinforced concrete buildings with masonry in-fills, and consequently, to support the derivation of rational rules for analysis and design purposes. Prior to the beginning of this thesis, a huge concern was the large amount of computational resources needed for both solving systems of linear equations resulting from the use of the finite elements method, and for storing internal variables needed in the integration of constitutive models. Therefore, in this work, computational strategies used to enable the analysis of real life structures are also provided. The simplicity required to handle meshes with high amount of finite elements pushed us to develop a new layered finite element, that can reproduce the non-linear behavior of its constituent materials when there are out-of-plane stresses, this, without having to introduce additional degrees of freedom. The finite element proposed has been com- pared to finite element with different kinematics obtaining excellent results. The robustness and efficiency of the developed methodology for analysis of masonry and concrete buildings, is conditioned by the ability of using different patterns of steel reinforcement, which are typically presented in real life structures. That is why it has also been necessary to develop a computing program capable of reading both finite element meshes, and patterns of fibers represented with convex polygons, and as a result of areas intersections between polygons returns volumetric participation of fiber and matrix of constituents materials for each layer, in addition had to return the fiber orientation with respect to the local axis of the finite element. The numerical results obtained have been compared in some cases with experimental results available in the literature, in other cases, with numerical results obtained using Building Codes, in both cases, there have been good agreement between them. Finally, it has been possible to characterize a representative medium-rise building of Mexico City using the capacity spectrum method. This method is widely used nowadays for the assessment of building behavior, since using fragility curves can represent the ability of a building to resist an earthquake.