Calibration of brick-masonry material parameters through Inverse Analysis and Proper Orthogonal Decomposition

Accurate safety assessment of existing structures usually requires the use of advanced numerical approaches. As far as brick-masonry structures are concerned, mesoscale models with nonlinear interfaces offer a sound representation of masonry behaviour under different loading conditions. However material calibration for interfaces representing brick-mortar joints is hard to be performed using conventional experimental procedures. In this respect inverse analysis has been successfully applied by the authors for the identification of brick-mortar interface elastic parameters. This approach involves a large number of FE simulations which can become prohibitive when investigating strength parameters because of the high computational cost usually required in nonlinear analysis. In this work, an alternative numerical strategy using Proper Orthogonal Decomposition and Kriging interpolation is proposed. The advantages of the method are shown considering an accurate 3D nonlinear mesoscale model for brick-masonry and a low-invasive experimental set-up.