The Behaviours of the Brick-Masonry Infilled RC Frame Structure under Reversed Cyclic Lateral Loading

Abstract

The experimental study for investigating the seismic responses of the Reinforced Concrete (RC) frame specimens is presented in this paper. Regarding this experimental, two one-bay and scaled-down specimens have been prepared and tested, i.e., RC bare frame and RC frame with brick masonry infill. The masonry infilled RC frame specimen was the RC frame which was infilled by the extracted brick masonry wall from the survive RC building in Padang city due to September 2007 Sumatra earthquake. These both of specimens, obviously, represent the typical low-rise RC building in West Sumatra, Indonesia. These specimens were tested to the constant vertical load, and lateral static reversed cyclic loading in the structural testing facilities. The lateral loading was applied incrementally and controlled by the drift angle of the specimens. The drift angle is the ratio between the lateral displacement of the top of the column and the column height of the specimen. The applied incremental lateral load and displacements at several points on the specimens were measured and recorded during the testing. The observation of the major cracks and its propagation were also conducted to identify the failure mechanism of the RC frame specimens. Comparison of the testing results for both of the specimens suggests that the masonry brick infill contributed to significantly increase the dissipating energy capacity, lateral strength, and stiffness of overall RC frames. On the other hand, unfortunately, the ductility performance of the brick masonry infilled RC frame specimen was decreasing. The presence of brick masonry infill in the RC frame seems to control the failure mechanism of the RC frame, reduces the deformation capacity of the boundary column, and alters the lateral and axial deformations of boundary columns.