INCORPORATING POISSON EFFECT INTO DEM FOR ENHANCED NUMERICAL ANALYSIS OF MASONRY STRUCTURES.

In the distinct element method (DEM), a structure is modeled as an assembly of rigid elements, and the failure of the structure is represented by the breakage of the springs that connect the elements. The original DEM has a drawback in that spring constants cannot be theoretically determined. The refined DEM solved this problem and made the spring constant possible to be theoretically determined from material properties. However, the refined DEM still has a drawback in that the Poisson effect cannot be considered, and it cannot represent the tensile stress/strain and tensile failure in the orthogonal direction of the compressive force. This study proposes a method to introduce the Poisson effect into the refined DEM that can consider tensile stress/strain or tensile failure due to the Poisson effect. Since the non-diagonal component of the elasticity tensor expresses the Poisson effect, the Poisson effect is introduced using the element stiffness matrix developed using the non-diagonal component of the elasticity tensor. Through numerical analysis of the compression test of a concrete block, it was confirmed that the Poisson's ratio value was quantitatively reproduced, and tensile cracks were qualitatively reproduced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]