• 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.37 no.2
• /
• pp.177-196
• /
• 2011

An economic, structurally effective and practically applicable strengthening technique was developed for reinforced concrete (RC) framed buildings. The idea of the technique is to convert the existing hollow brick infill wall into a load carrying system acting as a cast-in-place RC infill wall by bonding relatively thin high strength precast concrete PC panels to the plastered hollow brick infill. For this purpose, a total of eight one-third scale, one bay, one story frames were tested under reversed-cyclic lateral loads. Test frames were designed and constructed with common deficiencies observed in practice. Four different panel types were used for strengthening. Test results showed that both strength and stiffness of the frames were significantly improved by the introduction of PC panels. Experimental results were compared with the analytical approaches suggested by the authors.

• Earthquakes and Structures
• /
• v.11 no.5
• /
• pp.887-904
• /
• 2016

An efficient, economical and practical strengthening method for hollow brick infill walls was proposed and investigated in the present study, experimentally and numerically. This method aims at increasing the overall lateral strength and stiffness of the structure by increasing the contribution of the infill walls and providing the non-bearing components of the structure with the capability of absorbing earthquake-induced energy to minimize structural damage during seismic excitations. A total of eleven full-scale infill walls strengthened with expanded mild steel plates were tested under diagonal monotonic loading to simulate the loading condition of the non-bearing walls during an earthquake. The contact surface between the plates and the wall was increased with the help of plaster. Thickness of the plates bonded to both faces of the wall and the spacing of the bolts were adopted as test parameters. The experiments indicated that the plates were able to carry a major portion of the tensile stresses induced by the diagonal loads and provided the walls walls with a considerable confining effect. The composite action attained by the plates and the wall until yielding of the bolts increased the load capacities, rigidities, ductilities and energy-absorption capacities of the walls, considerably.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
• /
• v.74 no.1
• /
• pp.121-128
• /
• 2020

This paper presents an experimental study on the dynamic characteristics of infilled reinforced concrete (RC) frames. A 1/3-scaled, one-bay, three-storey RC frame was produced and tested by using operational modal analysis (OMA). The experiments were performed on five specimens: one reference frame with no infill walls and four frames with infill walls. The RC frame systems included infill walls made of hollow clay brick, which were constructed in four different patterns. The dynamic characteristics of the patterns, including the frequency, mode shapes and damping ratios in the in-plane direction, were obtained by 6 accelerometers. Twenty-minute records under ambient vibration were collected for each model, and the dynamic characteristics were determined using the ambient vibration testing and modal identification software (ARTeMIS). The experimental studies showed that the infill walls significantly affected the frequency value, rigidity and damping ratio of the RC frame system.