The seismic responses of RC frames infilled with full and partial masonry walls under cyclic lateral load

Abstract

This paper presents the seismic responses of full and partial brick masonry infilled frames under lateral load. Four test specimens of ¼ scale-down single-story single-bay, including one RC bare frame, one RC frame with a full brick masonry wall, and two RC frames with partial brick masonry walls were tested under quasi-static cyclic loading. During the tests, initial crack, cracks propagation, and failure processes of specimens were monitored. Lateral forces and displacements in-plane direction at several points on specimens were recorded. Consequently, it was found the differences of seismic responses between a bare frame, fully masonry infilled frame, and partially masonry infilled frames. Installing full or partial masonry infills in the RC frames structure can change the failure mechanism, increase the lateral strength and stiffness, but decrease the ductility performance of the whole structure.