Journals Proceedings

Abstract

Masonry Infill walls (MI) can be frequently found as interior and exterior partitions for architectural purposes in RC structures. Although they are generally considered to be non-structural elements, their influence on the seismic performance of the framed structures is significant. A common practice in the modern and old RC buildings is to use the ground-storey of the buildings for commercial; garages, storages, shops…etc. In the present work, the effect of the MI walls on seismic performance of the RC framed structures has been studied. For that, 2-D, six-storey, three-bay, framed structures, which are fully and partially infilled with the MI walls, have been studied using different infill walls' configuration in order to simulate the cases of ignoring or taking the stiffness and strength of the IM walls, and simulating the common practice of removing the infill walls in the ground storey. Double-strut nonlinear cyclic model for masonry walls has been utilized in order to account for the structural action of the MI walls. Dynamic time history analysis using three different ground motions records to represent wide range of frequency contents, has been used to perform the seismic analysis of the considered model configurations. Some selected numerical simulation results in terms of base shear forces, lateral deflections, and inter-storey drift ratios are obtained for all the considered configurations and presented in a comparative way.