engleski

Interpretation of in-plane response and definition of damage levels for masonry infilled RC frames

Since a wide range of material types and building techniques is commonly being adopted for the construction of masonry infills in Europe and worldwide, involving significant sources of uncertainties, a unified approach for the definition of accurate performance criteria is difficult to be achieved. Thus, experimental studies present one of the fundamental sources for the evaluation of strength, stiffness and deformation properties for masonry infills. In the present work a method for the interpretation of experimental results representing the cyclic in-plane response of single-bay, single-storey masonry infilled RC frames is proposed, aimed to allow the comparison of different infill typologies and facilitate the calibration of infill models for numerical applications. Based on a numerical simulation of the in-plane response of the infilled frames, representing the masonry infill as a compressive diagonal strut pinned at its ends to the intersection of beam and column centrelines, the approach is applied to some in-plane experimental tests on infilled RC frames carried out in the past. Based on the comparison of experimental and numerical results for infilled and bare frames, a calibration of the numerical model can be performed with particular attention to the evaluation of the strain properties characterizing the nonlinear behaviour of the strut. Having in mind the importance of in-plane damage limitations for masonry infills, performance levels for infilled RC frames can be defined as a function of increasing masonry infill damage in terms of values of strains in the equivalent strut and related inter-storey frame drifts.

Masonry infills; RC frames; in-plane seismic response; experimental results; damage limit states

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