“…The direct tension test of masonry prisms and clay bricks is relatively well studied in the literature [47,48]; however, there exist few research studies investigating the influence of tensile forces parallel to bed joints. In this section, the validated contact model (exponential softening) in Pre-print version, Reference: Pulatsu, B., Erdogmus, E., Lourenço, P.B., Lemos, J.V.…”