Effects of infill wall thickness and arrangement on the seismic performance of the reinforced concrete frames

Abstract

In this study, it is aimed to investigate the seismic behavior of the reinforced concrete (RC) frames with and without infill walls having different thickness and arrangement. To this, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 story RC frames consisting of 4 and 5 bays were studied. Infill walls were introduced into the frame models by considering four different arrangements over the height of the structure such as full infill frame (FIF), full infill frame with soft story (FI-SSF), exterior bay infill frame (EBIF), and exterior bay infill frame with soft story (EBI-SSF). For each case, four different infill wall thicknesses of 10 to 25 cm were taken into account. Thus, a total of 170 different frame models with and without infill walls were investigated thorough nonlinear static analysis method by means of SAP 2000 program. The infill panels were modeled by utilizing equivalent diagonal compression strut. As a result of the analyses, the capacity curves of the structures, maximum base shear force, initial stiffness, and mechanism of the plastic hinge formation in the structures were determined and comparatively discussed. It was observed that both wall thickness and arrangement have significant impact on the lateral load carrying capacity and hinge formation of the case studied structures, on the other hand, with their compatible choice the greatest seismic performance could be achieved.