Title: Effect of infill masonry wall with central opening on seismic behaviour of reinforced concrete structure

Authors: Sayed Qudratullah Sharafi; Taiki Saito

Addresses: Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering, Toyohashi University of Technology, 1-1 Hibarigaoka, Tempaku-cho, Toyohashi, Ichi, 441-8580, Japan ' Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering, Toyohashi University of Technology, 1-1 Hibarigaoka, Tempaku-cho, Toyohashi, Ichi, 441-8580, Japan

Abstract: Un-reinforced masonry walls are commonly used as partition walls inside the reinforced concrete (RC) buildings in most of the countries. Although, the infill masonry walls are not accounted in structural design process (non-structural elements) but they can significantly change the seismic performance of structures such as strength, stiffness, story drift and energy dissipation. Several analytical and experimental research have been performed to find out the influence of infill masonry walls with opening inside the RC structure, by changing the opening location, opening size, aspect ratio of opening, infill wall connection with frame, material properties and so on. The current research aims to propose a new method (net area of masonry wall and average struts angle) to estimate the capacity of infill masonry wall with central opening and study the effect on the seismic performance of the RC structure. The shear strength of the infill masonry obtained by the proposed method was compared with experimental results as well as with the analysis methods to confirm its accuracy. The nonlinear frame analysis program, STERA 3D, developed by one of the authors was used for the analysis.

Keywords: RC structure; infill masonry; opening; shear strength; earthquake response analysis.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMRI.2023.134237

International Journal of Masonry Research and Innovation, 2023 Vol.8 No.6, pp.531 - 548

Received: 06 Jul 2021
Accepted: 24 Nov 2021
Published online: 13 Oct 2023 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article