Lateral load behaviour of Glass Fibre Reinforced Gypsum walls supported on Reinforced Concrete frames

Abstract

Glass Fibre Reinforced Gypsum (GFRG) panel is a light-weight load-bearing hollow building panel, used as structural elements (walls, slabs etc.) with Reinforced Concrete (RC) filled inside the cavities. In GFRG construction, usually all the load bearing walls start from the foundation itself. But the ever-growing issue of land scarcity compels the housing sector to have the provision of parking space at the ground storey of the building. This will require the GFRG walls to be supported on an RC frame structure with columns, beams and slabs. The columns of such a structure can potentially cause a brittle mode of failure under the action of seismic forces, owing to the development of plastic hinges resulting in storey mechanism. The behaviour of such structures under combined gravity and lateral loads (monotonic and cyclic) was evaluated in the present study through quasi-static testing of two full scale specimens. The failure of the specimen under lateral loading was characterised by the failure of wall panel, with extensive crack formation before the yielding of frame members. The test results demonstrated the feasibility of designing GFRG wall on RC frame system without leading to brittle collapse mechanisms.