• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.76 no.3
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• pp.421-433
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• 2020

Masonry infills are normally considered as non-structural elements in design practice, therefore, the interaction between the bounding frame and the strength contribution of masonry infills is commonly ignored in the seismic analysis work of the RC frames. However, a number of typical RC frames with irregular distributed masonry infills have suffered from undesirable weak-story failure in major earthquakes, which indicates that ignoring the influence of masonry infills may cause great seismic collapse risk of RC frames. This paper presented the investigation on the risk of seismic collapse of RC frames with irregularly distributed masonry infills through a large number of nonlinear time history analyses (NTHAs). Based on the results of NTHAs, seismic fragility curves were developed for RC frames with various distribution patterns of masonry infills. It was found that the existence of masonry infills generally reduces the collapse risk of the RC frames under both frequent happened and very strong earthquakes, however, the severe irregular distribution of masonry infills, such as open ground story scenario, results in great risk of forming a weak story failure. The strong-column weak-beam (SCWB) ratio has been widely adopted in major seismic design codes to control the potential of weak story failures, where a SCWB ratio value about 1.2 is generally accepted as the lower limit. In this study, the effect of SCWB ratio on inter-story drift distribution was also parametrically investigated. It showed that improving the SCWB ratio of the RC frames with irregularly distributed masonry infills can reduce inter-story drift concentration index under earthquakes, therefore, prevent weak story failures. To achieve the same drift concentration index limit of the bare RC frame with SCWB ratio of about 1.2, which is specified in ACI318-14, the SCWB ratio of masonry-infilled RC frames should be no less than 1.5. For the open ground story scenario, this value can be as high as 1.8.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.75 no.3
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• pp.295-309
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• 2020

The construction of Reinforced Concrete (R/C) buildings with unreinforced masonry infills is part of the traditional building practice in many countries with regions of high seismicity throughout the world. When these buildings are subjected to seismic motions the presence of masonry infills and especially their configuration can highly influence the seismic damage state. The capability to avoid configurations of masonry infills prone to seismic damage at the stage of initial architectural concept would be significantly definitive in the context of Performance-Based Earthquake Engineering. Along these lines, the present paper investigates the potential of instant prediction of the damage response of R/C buildings with various configurations of masonry infills utilizing Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs). To this end, Multilayer Feedforward Perceptron networks are utilized and the problem is formulated as pattern recognition problem. The ANNs' training data-set is created by means of Nonlinear Time History Analyses of 5 R/C buildings with a large number of different masonry infills' distributions, which are subjected to 65 earthquakes. The structural damage is expressed in terms of the Maximum Interstorey Drift Ratio. The most significant conclusion which is extracted is that the ANNs can reliably estimate the influence of masonry infills' configurations on the seismic damage level of R/C buildings incorporating their optimum design.

• Coupled systems mechanics
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.169-184
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• 2019

This research work presents a study that aims to assess the dynamic structural behaviour and also investigate the human comfort levels of a reinforced concrete building, when subjected to nondeterministic wind dynamic loadings, considering the effect of masonry infills on the global stiffness of the structural model. In general, the masonry fills most of the empty areas within the structural frames of the buildings. Although these masonry infills present structural stiffness, the common practice of engineers is to adopt them as static loads, disregarding the effect of the masonry infills on the global stiffness of the structural system. This way, in this study a numerical model based on sixteen-storey reinforced concrete building with 48 m high and dimensions of $14.20m{\times}15m$ was analysed. This way, static, modal and dynamic analyses were carried out in order to simulate the structural model based on two different strategies: no masonry infills and masonry infills simulated by shell finite elements. In this investigation, the wind action is considered as a nondeterministic process with unstable properties and also random characteristics. The fluctuating parcel of the wind is decomposed into a finite number of harmonic functions proportional to the structure resonant frequency with phase angles randomly determined. The nondeterministic dynamic analysis clearly demonstrates the relevance of a more realistic numerical modelling of the masonry infills, due to the modifications on the global structural stiffness of the building. The maximum displacements and peak accelerations values were reduced when the effect of the masonry infills (structural stiffness) were considered in the dynamic analysis. Finally, it can be concluded that the human comfort evaluation of the sixteen-storey reinforced concrete building can be altered in a favourable way to design.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.55-71
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• 2018

This paper investigates the role of the masonry infills on the correlation between widely used earthquake Intensity Measures (IMs) and the damage state of 3D R/C buildings taking into account the orientation of the seismic input. For the purposes of the investigation an extensive parametric study is conducted using 60 R/C buildings with different heights, structural systems and masonry infills' distributions. The results reveal that the correlation between the IMs and the seismic damage can be strongly affected by the masonry infills' distribution, depending on the special characteristics of the structural system, the number of stories and the incident angle.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.71-82
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• 2019

Most school buildings consist of reinforced concrete (RC) moment frames with masonry infills. The longitudinal direction frames of those school buildings are relatively weak due to the short-column effects caused by the partial masonry infills and need to be evaluated carefully. In 'Manual for Seismic Performance Evaluation and Retrofit of School Facilities' published in 2018, response modification factor of 2.5 is applied to non-seismic RC moment frames with partial masonry infills, but sufficient verification of the factor has not been reported yet. Therefore, this study conducted seismic performance evaluation of planar RC moment frames with partial masonry infills in accordance with both linear analysis and nonlinear static analysis procedures presented in the manual. The evaluation results from the different procedures are compared in terms of assessed performance levels and number of members not meeting target performance objectives. Finally, appropriate response modification factors are proposed with respect to a shear-controlled column ratio.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.257-279
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• 2015

The primary objective of this study is to summarize results from previous experimental tests on laboratory specimens of RC/steel frames with masonry infills, in order to develop fragility functions that permit the estimation of damage in typical non-structural components of RC frame buildings, as a function of attained peak interstory drift. The secondary objective is to derive loss functions for such non-structural components, which provide information on the probability of experiencing a certain level of monetary loss when a given damage state is attained. Fragility curves and loss function developed in this study can be directly used within the FEMA P-58 framework for the seismic performance assessment of RC frame buildings with masonry infills.

• Journal of Korean Association for Spatial Structures
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.57-64
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• 2022

As earthquakes have increased in Korea recently, people are paying attention to the seismic performance of buildings built in the past. Many school buildings in Korea were built based on standard drawings before the seismic design was applied. However, since school buildings are often designated as emergency evacuation facilities in case of disasters such as earthquakes, seismic evaluation and retrofit must be done quickly. This study investigated the failure modes among structural components (beams, columns, and joints), focusing on 1980s standard drawings for school buildings. The effects of column axial force, partial masonry infills, and different material strengths for concrete and rebar were considered for detailed evaluation. As a result, most of the joints were found to be the weakest among structural components. Column axial forces tended to make the joints more vulnerable, and partial masonry infills increased the possibility of joint failure and shear failure in columns.

• KCI Concrete Journal
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.153-164
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• 1999

The objective of this research is to observe the actual response of a low-rise nonseismic moment-resisting masonry-infilled reinforced concrete frame subjected to varied levels of earthquake ground motions. The reduction scale for the model was determined as 1 : 5 considering the capacity of the shaking table to be used. This model was, then, subjected to the shaking table motions simulating Taft N2IE component earthquake ground motion, whose peak ground acceleration(PGA) was modified to 0.12g, 0.2g, 0.3g, and 0.4g. The g1oba1 behavior and failure mode were observed. The lateral accelerations and displacements at each story and local deformations at the critical portions of the structure were measured. Before and after each earthquake simulation test, free vibration tests and white noise tests were performed to find the changes in the natural period of the model. When the results of the masonry-infilled frame are compared with those of the bare frame, it can be recognized that masonry infills contribute to the large increase in the stiffness and strength of the g1oba1 structure whereas it also accompanies the increase of earthquake inertia forces. However, it is judged that masonry infills may be beneficial to the performance of the structure since the rate of increase in strength appears to be greater than that of the induced earthquake inertia forces.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.44 no.6
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• pp.763-774
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• 2012

Reinforced concrete frame structures with masonry infill walls constitute the significant portion of the building stock in Turkey. Therefore it is very important to understand the behavior of masonry infill frame structures under earthquake loads. This study presents an experimental work performed on reinforced concrete (RC) frames with different types of masonry infills, namely standard and locked bricks. Earthquake effects are induced on the RC frames by quasi-static tests. Results obtained from different frames are compared with each other through various stiffness, strength, and energy related parameters. It is shown that locked bricks may prove useful in decreasing the problems related to horizontal and vertical irregularities defined in building codes. Moreover tests show that locked brick infills maintain their integrity up to very high drift levels, showing that they may have a potential in reducing injuries and fatalities related to falling hazards during severe ground shakings.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.45-69
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• 2014

The 2009 L'Aquila, Italy earthquake shook a high density area causing a wide spectrum of damage to reinforced concrete with infill buildings, one of the most common building types used in Italy. The earthquake has proven to be a "full-scale" laboratory to further understand building performance. This paper presents the first results of a joint research effort between the University of Bologna and Degenkolb Engineers, aimed at investigating the seismic behavior of an infilled frame building that collapsed during the earthquake. State-of-the-practice techniques were implemented as a way to determine the reliability of these modeling techniques in anticipating the observed building performance. The main results indicate that: (i) the state-of-the-practice techniques are able to predict the observed behavior of the buildings; (ii) the masonry infills have a great influence on the behavior of the building in terms of stiffness, strength and global ductility.