Effect of infill walls on progressive collapse behavior of self-centering precast concrete frame

Abstract

To study the effect of infill walls on the progressive collapse resisting-performance of self-centering precast concrete (PC) frame structures, three 1/2 scaled, two-span and two-story self-centering PC frame specimens with and without infill walls were tested under quasi-static pushdown loading regime. The test results showed that the failure modes of self-centering PC frames were governed by concrete cracking and local spalling at the beam ends under progressive collapse scenario. Compared with self-centering bare frame, the presence of infill walls provided additional load path, thereby reducing the concrete damage at the beam ends to some extent. The full infill walls with lower strength could still increase the initial stiffness and peak resistance of self-centering bare frame to 2.47 times and 1.33 times, while the infill walls with 20% opening ratio could increase to 2.21 times and 1.19 times, respectively. Nevertheless, the infill walls also reduced the self-centering capacity of the structures. Numerical analyses further indicated that the magnitude of prestress force of steel strands between beams and columns, the strength of bed joints as well as the width of infill walls had a great effect on the progressive collapse of self-centering infilled frames. Finally, based on numerical results, a reduction factor formula was proposed to quickly estimate the structural resistance of self-centering infilled frames with different opening ratios.