Assessment of seismic vulnerability of RCC buildings with URM infills

Abstract

A structure’s seismic vulnerability may be defined as being susceptible to the damage by ground shaking of a given intensity. Earthquakes are a serious threat to buildings due to their unpredictable nature and serious damage causing ability. Seismic risk is related to seismic hazard, vulnerability of buildings and exposure conditions. Estimation of vulnerability of structures for seismic forces (earthquake) is extremely important in design point of view. In case of RCC buildings, unreinforced masonry (URM) infills behave as the most common partition element and are also considered as non-structural elements. The interaction of infill panel with the frame may have a significant impact on the vulnerability of buildings. But, the effect of the infills on the responses is always underestimated in practice due to lack of codal provisions for the modelling of infills in Indian codes. In the present study, various types of buildings are designed as per Indian Standards (IS) codal provisions and seismic vulnerability of the buildings (with and without infill panels) in different damage states are investigated using fragility curves. Seismic responses of the buildings are determined using both the non-linear static pushover analysis. This study suggests that URM infills have an undesirable effect on the response of buildings and significantly increase the seismic vulnerability which confers that the effect of URM infills must be incorporated in the design codes.