Seismic performance of masonry-infilled RC frames

Abstract

The masonry infill of RC frames structures is generally considered as non-structural. The design of the concrete frames is often made by ignoring the influence of the masonry infill, which is only accounted for its mass. The experience on buildings submitted to earthquakes shows that masonry infill walls completely change the behaviour of bare frames due to increased initial stiffness and low deformability. The way in which masonry infills affect the RC frames members is difficult to predict, as different failure modes can occur either in the masonry or in the surrounding frame. In addition to local effects, the position of the masonry infills at different levels can lead to structural irregularity, with a strong influence on the global seismic response of the building. Less infilled stories, also called soft stories, have a particularly unfavourable behaviour under seismic loads, as frame members at these levels are more susceptible to failure. This paper analyses the differences in the behaviour of bare and infilled frames through numerical modelling. Nonlinear push-over analyses of infilled frames are carried out under in-plane vertical and lateral loading. The infill panels are modelled as equivalent single diagonal struts. Several force-displacements laws are considered for these diagonals.

Keywords

• soft story
• capacity curves
• nonlinear analysis