• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
• /
• v.57 no.4
• /
• pp.641-656
• /
• 2016

Reinforced concrete frame buildings with masonry infill walls are one of the most popular structural systems in the world. In most cases, the effects of masonry infill walls are not considered in structural models. The results of earthquakes show that infill walls have a significant effect on the seismic response of buildings. In some cases, the buildings collapsed as a result of the formation of a soft story. This study developed a simple method, called corner opening, by replacing the corner of infill walls with a very flexible material to enhance the structural behavior of walls. To evaluate the proposed method a series of experiments were conducted on masonry infill wall and reinforced concrete frames with and without corner openings. Two 1:4 scale masonry infill walls with and without corner openings were tested under diagonal tension or shear strength and two RC frames with full infill walls and with corner opening infill walls were tested under monotonic horizontal loading up to a drift level of 2.5%. The experimental results revealed that the proposed method reduced the strength of infill wall specimens but considerably enhanced the ductility of infill wall specimens in the diagonal tension test. Moreover, the corner opening in infill walls prevented the slid shear failure of the infill wall in RC frames with infill walls.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
• /
• v.75 no.2
• /
• pp.211-227
• /
• 2020

The contribution of infill wall is generally not considered in the structural analysis of reinforced concrete (RC) structures due to the lack of knowledge of the complex behavior of the infilled frame of RC structures. However, one of the significant factors affecting structural behavior and earthquake performance of RC structures is the infill wall. Considering structural and architectural features of RC structures, any infill wall may have openings with different amounts and aspect ratios. In the present study, the influence of infill walls with different opening rates on the structural behaviors and earthquake performance of existing RC structures were evaluated. Therefore, the change in the opening ratio in the infill wall has been investigated for monitoring the change in structural behavior and performance of the RC structures. The earthquake performance levels of existing RC structures with different structural properties were determined by detecting the damage levels of load-carrying components. The results of the analyzes indicate that the infill wall can completely change the distribution of column and beam damage level. It was observed that the openings in the walls had serious impact on the parameters affecting the behavior and earthquake performance of the RC structures. The infill walls have a beneficial effect on the earthquake performance of RC structures, provided they are placed regularly and there are appropriate openings rate throughout the RC structures and they do not cause structural irregularities.

• 한국방재학회:학술대회논문집
• /
• 2008.02a
• /
• pp.53-56
• /
• 2008

A reinforced concrete (RC) cast-in-place (CIP) infill wall retrofitting method may provide an improved seismic performance and economical efficiency for the non-ductile rahmen structures. In this study, four one story-one bay non-ductile frame were constructed and retrofitted with CIP infill wall to evaluate seismic performance of CIP infill wall-frame. From the test results, infill wall-frame exhibited a marked increase in shear strength compared to non-ductile RC frame specimen. But the ductility and story-drift at maximum load were decreased when shear strength of infill wall larger than that of existing RC frame. Therefore, it is confirmed that adequate reinforcement detail is required to assure sufficient seismic performance.

• Advances in concrete construction
• /
• v.8 no.2
• /
• pp.77-90
• /
• 2019

This paper aims to investigate vibration frequency decrease (vibration period elongation) of reinforced concrete (RC) structure with unreinforced infill wall and reinforced infill wall exposed to progressively increased artificial earthquake load on shaking table. For this purpose, two shaking table experiments were selected as a case study. Shaking table experiments were carried on 1:1 scaled prototype one bay one storey RC structure with infill walls. The purpose of this shaking table experiment sequence is to assess local behavior and progressive collapse mechanism. Frequency decrease and eigen-vector evolution are directly related to in-plane and out-of-plane bearing capacities of infill wall enclosure with reinforced concrete frame. Firstly, frequency decrease-damage relationship was evaluated on the base of experiment results. Then, frequency decrease and stiffness degradation were evaluated with applied Peak Ground Acceleration (PGA) by considering strength deterioration. Lastly, eigenvector evolution-local damage and eigenvector evolution-frequency decrease relationship was investigated. Five modes were considered while evaluating damage and frequency decrease of the tested specimens. The relationship between frequency decrease, stiffness degradation and damage level were presented while comparing with Unreinforced Brick Infill (URB) and Reinforced Infill wall with Bed Joint Reinforcement (BJR) on the base of natural vibration frequency.

• Computers and Concrete
• /
• v.32 no.5
• /
• pp.455-464
• /
• 2023

Seismologists now suggest that the earth has entered an active seismic period; many earthquake-related events are occurring globally. Consequently, numerous casualties, as well as economic losses due to earthquakes, have been reported in recent years. Primarily, significant and colossal damage occurs in reinforced concrete (RC) buildings with masonry infill wall systems, and the construction of these types of structures have increased worldwide. According to a report from the Ministry of Education in the Republic of Korea, many buildings were built with RC frames with masonry infill walls in the Republic of Korea during the 1980s. For years, most structures of this type have been school buildings, and since the Pohang earthquake in 2017, the government of the Republic of Korea has paid close attention to this social event and focused on damage from earthquakes. From a long-term research perspective, damage from structural collapse due to the short column effect has been a major concern, specifically because the RC frame with a masonry infill wall system is the typical form of structure for school buildings. Therefore, the short column effect has recently been a major topic for research. This study compares one RC frame with four different types of RC frames with masonry infill wall systems. Structural damage due to the short column effect is clearly analyzed, as the result of this research is giving in a higher infill wall system produces a greater shear force on the connecting point between the infill wall system and the column. The study is expected to be a useful reference for research on the short column effect in RC frames with masonry infill wall systems.

• Computers and Concrete
• /
• v.7 no.6
• /
• pp.523-532
• /
• 2010

If an infill wall in a reinforced concrete frame is shorter than the column height and there is no initial gap between the column and the infill wall, the short column effect can occur during an earthquake shaking. This form of damage is frequently observed in many earthquake-damaged buildings all around the world and especially in Turkey. In this study, an effective method, which consists of placing additional infill wall segments surrounding the short column, to prevent this type of failure is examined. The influence of adding infill wall in the reduction of the shear force in the short column is also investigated. A parametric study is carried out for one-storey infilled frames with one to five bays using the percentage of the additional infill wall surrounding the short column and the number of spans as the parameters. Then the investigation is extended to a case of a multistorey building damaged due to short column effect during the 1998 Adana-Ceyhan earthquake in Turkey. The results show that the addition of the infill walls around the potential short columns is an effective way to significantly reduce the shear force.

• Journal of the Korea Concrete Institute
• /
• v.24 no.1
• /
• pp.3-14
• /
• 2012

This paper describes experimental results on the seismic performance of SHCC (strain-hardening cement composite) infill wall for improving damage tolerance capacity of non-ductile frame. To investigate the effect of tensile strain capacity and cracking behavior of SHCC materials on the shear behavior of SHCC infill wall, three infill walls were fabricated and tested under cyclic loading. The test parameter in this study is a type of cement composites; concrete and SHCCs. The two types of SHCC materials were prepared for infill walls. In order to induce crack damages into the mid-span of the infill wall, each infill wall had two 100-mm-deep-notches on both sides. Test results indicated that SHCC infill walls showed superior crack control capacities and much larger drift ratios at the peak loads than RC (reinforced concrete) infill wall, as expected. In particular, due to the bridging actions of the reinforcing fibers, SHCC matrix used in this study would delay the stiffness degradation of infill wall after the first inclined cracking. Moreover, from the damage classes based on the cracks' maximum width in the infill walls, it was observed that PIW-SHD specimen possessed nearly threefold seismic capacities compared to PIW-SLD specimen. Also, from the results on the strain of diagonal reinforcements, it can be concluded that the SHCC matrix would resist a part of tensile stresses transferred along steel rebar in the infill wall.

• Smart Structures and Systems
• /
• v.21 no.4
• /
• pp.521-535
• /
• 2018

The main purpose of this paper is to predict missing absolute out-of-plane displacements and failure limits of infill walls by artificial neural network (ANN) models. For this purpose, two shake table experiments are performed. These experiments are conducted on a 1:1 scale one-bay one-story reinforced concrete frame (RCF) with an infill wall. One of the experimental models is composed of unreinforced brick model (URB) enclosures with an RCF and other is composed of an infill wall with bed joint reinforcement (BJR) enclosures with an RCF. An artificial earthquake load is applied with four acceleration levels to the URB model and with five acceleration levels to the BJR model. After a certain acceleration level, the accelerometers are detached from the wall to prevent damage to them. The removal of these instruments results in missing data. The missing absolute maximum out-of-plane displacements are predicted with ANN models. Failure of the infill wall in the out-of-plane direction is also predicted at the 0.79 g acceleration level. An accuracy of 99% is obtained for the available data. In addition, a benchmark analysis with multiple regression is performed. This study validates that the ANN-based procedure estimates missing experimental data more accurately than multiple regression models.

• Earthquakes and Structures
• /
• v.6 no.2
• /
• pp.181-199
• /
• 2014

The infill walls, whose contribution to the earthquake resistance of a structure is generally ignored due to their limited lateral rigidities, constitute a part of the lateral load bearing system of an RC frame structure. A common method for improving the earthquake behavior of RC frame structures is increasing the contribution of the infill walls to the overall lateral rigidity by strengthening them through different techniques. The present study investigates the influence of externally bonded perforated steel plates on the load capacities, rigidities, and ductilities of hollow brick infill walls. For this purpose, a reference (unstrengthened) and twelve strengthened specimens were subjected to monotonic diagonal compression. The experiments indicated that the spacing of the bolts, connecting the plates to the wall, have a more profound effect on the behavior of a brick wall compared to the thickness of the strengthening plates. Furthermore, an increase in the plate thickness was shown to result in a considerable improvement in the behavior of the wall only if the plates are connected to the wall with closely-spaced bolts. This strengthening technique was found to increase the energy absorption capacities of the walls between 4 and 14 times the capacity of the reference wall. The strengthened walls reached ultimate loads 30-160% greater than the reference wall and all strengthened walls remained intact till the end of the test.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
• /
• v.75 no.3
• /
• pp.389-399
• /
• 2020

An infill wall made of high-performance fiber-reinforced cementitious composites (HPFRCC) was utilized in this study to strengthen the reinforced concrete (RC) frame structures that had not been designed for seismic loads. The seismic performance of the RC frame structures strengthened by the HPFRCC infill walls was investigated through the experimental tests, and the test results showed that they have improved strength and deformation capabilities compared to that strengthened by the RC infill wall. A simple numerical modeling method, called the modified longitudinal and diagonal line element model (LDLEM), was introduced to consider the seismic strengthening effect of the infill walls, in which a section aggregator approach was also utilized to reflect the effect of shear in the column members of the RC frames. The proposed model showed accurate estimations on the strength, stiffness, and failure modes of the test specimens strengthened by the infill walls with and without fibers.