The test of a full-scale three-story RC structure with masonry infill walls

Effect of Infill Walls on the Drift Behavior of Reinforced Concrete Frames Subjected to Lateral-Load Reversals

“…Forcing the system beyond its capacities causes the loss of heavily loaded infill walls at lower stories and induces the formation of a soft story, causing detrimental effects [Pinto and Taucer, 2006]. There is evidence [Dolsek and Fajfar, 2001; Lee and Woo, 2001;Pujol and Fick, 2010] that if the drift capacity of the frame-infill system is equal to or more than the seismic demands, the infill walls are beneficial. On the other hand, irregularities in the infill panels could result in unacceptably large deformations in the frames at early stages .…”

“…A frame-infill wall system typically reaches its peak strength at low interstory drifts of 0.3-1.0%. These peak values are generally not sustainable, and the frames usually fail at interstory drifts of 1.0-2.5% [Fiorato et al, 1970;Mehrabi et al, 1996;Dolsek and Fajfar, 2001;Zarnic et al, 2001;Pujol and Fick, 2010]. The main body of literature on frames with infill walls concentrates on identifying and setting rules about the behavior of infill walls at the story levels.…”

“…The situation is quite different under seismic loading. Based on earlier studies [Fiorato et al, 1970;Mehrabi et al, 1996;Applied Technology Council, 1999;Dolsek and Fajfar, 2001;Zarnic et al, 2001;Erdem et al, 2006;Hashemi and Mossalam, 2006;Pinto and Taucer, 2006;Dolsek and Fajfar, 2008;Pujol and Fick, 2010;Cankaya, 2011], it is well known that infill walls change the strength, stiffness and deformation properties of the frame structures. Typically, the strength and stiffness of the frames increase and the average drifts decrease compared to those of the bare frames.…”

“…The global response of the multi-story structures are typically studied by computer simulations based on the local data [Madan et al, 1997;Dolsek and Fajfar, 2002;Smyrou et al, 2008;Rodrigues et al, 2008;Gerardo et al, 2011]. There is a limited set of experimental studies that have multi-story specimens to investigate the effect of local behavior on the global response of the system [Fiorato et al, 1970;Dolsek and Fajfar, 2001;Pinto and Taucer, 2006;Pujol and Fick, 2010].…”

Influence of in-Plane and Out-of-Plane Interaction of Infill Walls on Global Collapse Resistance Capacity of Infilled Rc Frame

“…The mechanism of the interaction between the main structure and infill walls is complicated and it is also influenced by many factors, so there is still no consensus on how to deal with this issue rationally [4][5][6]. Based on the Strut and Tie model, Hashemi proposed an approach to model both the in-plane (IP) and out-of-plane (OOP) response of the infill, as well as the interaction between IP and OOP capacities.…”