Effect of unreinforced masonry infills on seismic performance of reinforced concrete frame-shear wall buildings

Abstract

Reinforced concrete (RC) shear wall buildings with unreinforced masonry (URM) infilled moment frames are common in India and neighboring countries. This study assesses the influence of the URM infills on their seismic performance. Fully infilled, open first-storied, and bare frame versions of a 25-story shear wall building are considered. Multiple stripe analysis is conducted at five return periods to estimate their performance. Fragility functions for the collapse prevention limit state, which is based on seven engineering demand parameter exceedance thresholds, are generated and compared. The presence of infills (full or partial) is observed to have an overall positive effect on the performance of the RC frame-shear wall buildings. The performance of the open first-story building was comparable to that of the fully infilled building. The ratio of story shear carried by the moment frames and shear walls is studied at all return periods to understand the variation in frame shear wall interaction with increased damage for each building. In the case of buildings with infills, the frames carry a higher proportion of story shear at lower return periods. For all three buildings, the fraction of story shear carried by moment frames increases along the height of the building.