Effect of brick infill walls on seismic performance of reinforced concrete structures

Brick infill walls have important effects on seismic performance, period, rigidity, ductility, energy dissipation capacity of the reinforced concrete structures. But, wall loads are considered as only dead loads by project engineers in our country. In order to obtain more accurate results about structural behavior, infill walls should be added to the analysis model in the performance analysis of structures. For this purpose, reinforced concrete structures having 3, 5 and 7 stories are investigated in the study. The structures are modeled and analyzed with brick infill walls and without brick infill walls. Besides, effects on seismic behaviors of brick infill walls having polypropylene fibrous stucco are investigated. In addition, seismic behaviors of structures having soft storey irregularity are researched. In the study, the infill walls are converted into equivalent diagonal strut and considered in the analysis model and so seismic behaviors of the structures are obtained more accurately. The first part of the study is the introduction section, in this section, general information about modeling, behavior and the effect of the infill walls on the structure are given and the structural models used are introduced. In the second part, some studies in the literature are presented. In the third chapter, the incremental equivalent seismic load method used for performance analysis of structures, idealization of nonlinear behavior of structural elements and damage assessment are presented and performance levels of the structures are determined. The equivalent diagonal strut method used for modeling of infill walls is mentioned and properties of infill walls are introduced. The structural models used in the study are explained in detail and structural irregularities are checked. In the fourth section, the performance analysis results of the structures are compared and performance levels are determined. In the fifth chapter, which is the section on conclusions and suggestions, some inferences are made about the effect of the infill walls on the various structure parameters and structure performances.