Masonry buildings constructed along busy roads are vulnerable to vehicular impacts. As most of these impacts are likely to occur at low velocity due to severe braking by drivers to avoid catastrophe, the present study reports a failure analysis of masonry walls subject to low velocity impacts. An explicit finite element modelling method incorporating homogenised anisotropic masonry material developed previously for static loading was validated through low velocity impact test datasets reported in the literature. Subsequently, an extensive study was undertaken to evaluate the impact damage patterns of masonry walls of varied boundary conditions, aspect ratios, and slenderness ratios. This paper identifies a threshold impact energy, below which contemporary single leaf masonry walls irrespective of their boundary conditions and aspect ratio, exhibit global damage with varied failure patterns. Slenderness ratio of the impacted wall is shown as the most important parameter in resisting impact loads. The results presented in this study can be useful for developing mitigation strategies for walls vulnerable to low velocity vehicular impacts.

沿繁忙道路建造的砖石建筑很容易受到车辆的冲击。由于大多数这些影响很可能是由于驾驶员严重制动以避免灾难而在低速下发生的，因此本研究报告对受低速冲击的砌体墙进行了失效分析。通过文献报道的低速冲击试验数据集验证了一种显式的有限元建模方法，该方法结合了以前为静态荷载而开发的均质各向异性砖石材料。随后，进行了广泛的研究，以评估边界条件，纵横比和细长比各不相同的砌体墙的冲击破坏模式。本文确定了阈值冲击能量，低于该阈值时，当代单片砌体墙无论其边界条件和纵横比如何，表现出各种损坏模式的整体损坏。冲击壁的细长比显示为抵抗冲击载荷的最重要参数。这项研究中提出的结果可用于开发针对易受低速车辆撞击影响的墙的缓解策略。