Abstract The anisotropy and meso-structure of masonry materials bring great difficulty for the numerical modeling of masonry arch bridges. To overcome this problem, a two-phase numerical modeling strategy based on cohesive elements is proposed and used to analyze the failure process of masonry arches in this study. According to the proposed strategy, masonry is assumed to be a two-phase material, which consists of two important components: stone blocks and mortar joints. Stone blocks are represented by solid elements where the compression failure is considered by introducing a nonlinear constitutive model. Mortar joints are described by zero-thickness cohesive elements, which are inserted into the interfaces of adjacent stone blocks automatically by a user-defined program. A Mohr-Coulomb type constitutive model supported by experimental results is proposed to describe the mechanical behavior of mortar joints, and two failure modes (tension and shear failure) are considered. The effectiveness of the proposed strategy is firstly identified by comparing with the experimental results, and then a sensitivity analysis is conducted to investigate the influence of the friction coefficients and load positions on failure behavior of the masonry arch.

中文翻译：

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一种分析砌体拱破坏过程的两阶段建模策略

摘要 砌体材料的各向异性和细观结构给砌体拱桥的数值建模带来了很大的困难。为了克服这个问题，本研究提出了一种基于粘性元素的两阶段数值建模策略，并用于分析砌体拱的破坏过程。根据所提出的策略，砌体被假定为两相材料，它由两个重要组成部分组成：石块和砂浆接缝。石块由实体单元表示，其中通过引入非线性本构模型来考虑压缩破坏。砂浆接缝由零厚度粘性元素描述，由用户定义的程序自动插入相邻石块的界面。提出了由实验结果支持的 Mohr-Coulomb 型本构模型来描述砂浆接缝的力学行为，并考虑了两种破坏模式（拉伸和剪切破坏）。首先通过与实验结果的比较来确定所提出策略的有效性，然后进行敏感性分析，以研究摩擦系数和荷载位置对砌体拱破坏行为的影响。