1. Department of Structural and Geotechnical Engineering, University of Rome Sapienza Via Eudossiana 18, 00184 Rome, Italy, daniela.addessi@uniroma1.it 
2. Department of Civil, Chemical, Environmental, and Materials Engineering, University of Bologna Viale del Risorgimento 2, 40136 Bologna, Italy, giovanni.castellazzi@unibo.it 
3. Department of Civil and Building Engineering, and Architecture, Polytechnic University of Marche Via Brecce Bianche 12, 60131 Ancona, Italy, francesco.clementi@univpm.it 
4. Department of Architecture, Built Environment and Construction Engineering, Polytechnic University of Milan, Piazza Leonardo da Vinci 32, 20133 Milan, Italy, gabriele.milani@polimi.it 

ABSTRACT 

Masonry constructions are widely spread, especially in European countries. Most of them represent ancient constructions and constitute an invaluable part of the world’s architectural and historical heritage. They are distinguished by different geometric shapes and architectural details and a wide variety of material arrangements and mechanical properties. Due to the old building period, in many cases, masonry structures experienced severe deterioration processes which increased the structure vulnerability to seismic events. They have drawn the attention of the scientific community over the past decades and great efforts were devoted to developing efficient and accurate procedures to assess the structural performances of these constructions. In this regard, the main aim is to evaluate their actual load-carrying capacities and safety level, accounting for the change in the life service conditions and the material deterioration that have occurred since they have been built, and possibly design the repair and strengthening interventions. 

Several approaches have been proposed and applied for the analysis of masonry structures, both unreinforced and strengthened, ranging from empirical to analytical and computational procedures. However, numerical modelling techniques are the most adopted nowadays, thanks to the increasing availability of computational tools and the continuous advancements in numerical methods for structural analysis. A variety of finite element formulations have been developed, adopting various nonlinear constitutive laws capable of describing the main nonlinear mechanisms evolving in masonry structures, as well as discrete elements and macro-element approaches have been put forward, just to mention the most spread. 

A suitable criterion for classifying masonry modelling approaches relies on the scale at which masonry is analyzed, distinguishing between micromechanical, macromechanical, and multiscale models, but also other criteria can be adopted. 

The aim of the proposed mini symposium is to collect the most recent research contributions on these topics and to discuss the current and future developments. 

REFERENCES 

• Roca, M. Cervera, G. Gariup and L. Pelà, “Structural Analysis of Masonry Historical Constructions. Classical and Advanced Approaches”, Arch. Computat. Methods Eng., Vol. 17, pp. 299–325, (2010). 
• Sacco, D. Addessi, and K. Sab, “New trends in mechanics of masonry”, Meccanica, Vol. 53, pp. 1565–1569, (2018). 
• D’Altri, A.M., Sarhosis, V., Milani, G. et al., “Modeling Strategies for the Computational Analysis of Unreinforced Masonry Structures: Review and Classification”, Arc Computat Methods Eng 27, 1153–1185, (2020).