Un-reinforced masonry walls are commonly used as infills in reinforced concrete (RC) buildings. These buildingshave high in-plane stiffness and strength, and therefore, the lateral load behaviour of such RC frames is different thanthat of the frames without infill walls. Openings in walls significantly reduce the lateral strength and stiffness of RCframes, and alter their failure modes. Past researchers have tried to find out experimentally and analytically the influenceof several parameters, like opening size and location, aspect ratio of openings, connection between frame and infill wall,ductile detailing in frame members, material properties, failure modes, etc. on behavior of masonry infill RC frames. Accordingly,several analytical models have been proposed in the literature and seismic codes of some countries to model thestiffness and strength properties of infill walls. Most of the past studies and seismic codes recommend modeling the infillsas equivalent diagonal struts, and cross-sectional area of the struts are reduced appropriately to account for openings in thewalls. Analytical methods have also been proposed to estimate the possible mode of failure and lateral load carrying capacityof infill frames with and without openings. The current article is intended to review and compare past relevant studiesand seismic codes of different countries on in-plane lateral load behaviour and modeling approaches for masonry infillRC frames with openings. The comparative study may help designers and code developers in selecting and recommendingsuitable analytical models for estimating strength, stiffness, failure modes, and other properties of infill RC frames withopenings.
展开▼
