RESEARCH ARTICLE
Numerical Investigation of the Effect of Infill Walls on the Structural Response of RC Frames
P. G. Asteris, D. M. Cotsovos*
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2012Volume: 6
First Page: 164
Last Page: 181
Publisher ID: TOBCTJ-6-164
DOI: 10.2174/1874836801206010164
Article History:
Received Date: 24/01/2012Revision Received Date: 29/04/2012
Acceptance Date: 30/04/2012
Electronic publication date: 31/10/2012
Collection year: 2012
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
The work presented herein sets out to investigate numerically, by means of nonlinear finite element analysis, the effect of un-reinforced concrete or masonry infill walls on the overall structural response of reinforced concrete frames under static monotonic and seismic loading. For this purpose, a nonlinear finite element package purpose built for the analysis of concrete structures is employed in order to predict the nonlinear behaviour of both the infill walls as well as the surrounding frame. Specifically, the dynamic response of a bare two-storey, one-bay frame, whose behaviour has been experimentally established in the past through shake-table testing, is first investigated via nonlinear finite element analysis. Subsequently, concrete and masonry walls are introduced into the selected frame in order to investigate numerically how important aspects of structural response such as stiffness, load-carrying capacity, deformation profile, cracking, ductility and mode of failure of the frame are affected.