Earthquake response of R/C frames with reinforced infill walls

Abstract

Most of the reinforced concrete structures that are built in the past few decades are in lack of ductility and lateral stiffness. In the content of the present work, a fast and economical remedy was searched to rehabilitate these type of buildings that are under high risk of earthquake damage.The strengthening technique needs to be finished in a short time without the people that live inside the buildings to move out. Furthermore, the chosen strengthening technique needs to be economical enough so that the home owner would not hesitate in making a decision of the rehabilitation.In regard of the above mentioned two criteria, existing infill clay brick walls may be strengthened by the addition of a wire mesh on the surface together with a layer of plaster. In order to investigate its effectiveness, a numerical investigation is carried out to study the behaviour of a strengthened infilled reinforced concrete (RC) frame using wire mesh under lateral reversed cyclic loading. A single span, one-story clay brick infilled RC frame is modeled and a nonlinear analysis is made.The analysis results indicate that the technique of strengthening with wire meshincreased the peak lateral load, ductility and energy dissipation.