Evaluation of Seismic Behavior for Low-Rise RC Moment Resisting Frame with Masonry Infill Walls

Abstract eng:
Masonry infill walls are frequently used as interior partitions and exterior walls in low- or middle- rise RC buildings. In the design and assessment of buildings, the infill walls are usually treated as non-structural elements and they are ignored in analytical models because they are assumed to be beneficial to the structural responses. Therefore, their influences on the structural response are ignored. In case of buildings constructed in USA, high seismicity regions, infill walls have lower strength and stiffness than the boundary frames or they are separated from the boundary frames. Thus, previous assumptions may be reasonable. However, these systems are not usually employed in most of other countries. Therefore, the differences in seismic behaviors of RC buildings with/without masonry infill walls, which are ignored in structural design, need to be investigated. In previous studies, the infill walls have high lateral resistance and tend to partially separate from the boundary frames. And they form a compression strut mechanism as observed at a high lateral load level. In this study, structural analyses were performed for a masonry infilled low-rise RC moment-resisting frame. The infill walls were modeled as equivalent diagonal struts. And seismic behaviors of RC moment-resisting frame with/without masonry infill walls were evaluated. From analytical results, masonry infill walls can increase the global strength and stiffness of a structure. Consequently, interstory drift ratio will be decreased but seismic forces applied to the structure were increased than design seismic load because natural period of the structure was decreased. And partial damage of infill walls by floor causes vertical irregularity of the strength and stiffness. The inelastic deformation of RC moment-resisting frame with soft story is concentrated on the first story columns and thus, partial damage may have possibility of collapse of system.

• Export as: BibTeX | MARC | MARCXML | DC | EndNote | NLM | RefWorks
• Add to your basket