Experimental study on the influence of the opening in brick-masonry wall to seismic performance of reinforced concrete frame structures

Abstract

Reinforced concrete (RC) frame structures with brick-masonry infills are commonly used in developing countries and high-risk seismic area, such as Indonesia. Significant researches have been carried out for studying the seismic performance of RC frame structures with brick-masonry infills. Only few of them focused on effects of the opening in the brick-masonry infill to the seismic performance of the RC frame structures. The presence of opening in brick-masonry infill is often used for placing doors and windows as well, however, it may reduce the seismic performance of the RC frame structure. In the current study, they influence of the opening in brick-masonry infills to the seismic performance RC frame structure will experimentally evaluated. Five of 1/4-scaled single story and single bay RC frame specimens were prepared, i.e. an RC bare frame, a clay brick-masonry infilled RC frame and three of clay brick-masonry infilled RC frame with openings in the brick-masonry infills. The last three specimens were clay brick infilled RC frame with a center opening, clay brick infilled RC frame with two openings used for placing the windows and clay brick infilled RC frame with opening for placing the door. The specimens pushed over by applying the static monotonic lateral load to the upper beam of the RC frame structures. The incremental of the lateral load and the lateral displacement of RC frame’s column was recorded during test. The crack propagation and the major cracks were also observed to identify the mechanism failure of specimens. As the results, the opening in the brick-masonry wall controls the failure mechanism, the lateral strength and the stiffness of the overall of infilled RC frame structure. The diagonal shear crack pattern was found on brick-masonry wall without opening, on other hand the different crack patterns were observed on brick-masonry wall with openings. Although the opening in the brick masonry infill reduced the lateral strength and stiffness of the infilled RC frame, it was still stronger and stiffer than the bare frame.