Investigation of the effects of infill walls on the behavior of reinforced concrete framed structures

Abstract

In Turkey, the use of hollow brick infills as partition walls in reinforced concrete (RC) framed buildings is widely used in practice. Although hollow brick infills are considered to be non-structural members, experimental studies conducted for years and investigations made on the structures after the earthquakes occurred in Turkey revealed that, in many cases, hollow brick infills have favorable effects on the strength and stiffness of the structures. According to the Turkish Earthquake Code, hollow brick infills are taken into account only at the calculation of the total dead load, however they do not affect the structural characteristics of the building. In the experimental part of this study, this study, one-bay two story reinforced concrete frames were tested under both vertical and reversed-cyclic lateral loads simulating the earthquake loads, and the effect of hollow brick infills on the strength and stiffness of the RC frames were investigated. In the analytical part of the study, the results of the analytical studies were compared with the results of the tests and a simple modeling of the hollow brick infills during the structural design process was proposed.