Strength and behavior of masonry infill walls that reinforced with perforated steel plate under the reversed cyclic loads

The importance of seismic rehabilitation became evident with the destructive earthquakes happened in the last twenty years, after which a large number of reinforced concrete (RC) buildings damaged required strengthening as well as repair. In the studies related to rehabilitation, it has been realized that inadequate lateral stiffness is one of the major causes of damage in RC buildings. For years, adding cast-in-place RC infill walls to RC frames has been applied widely as an effective rehabilitation technique, however it is laborious. Recently, economical, structurally effective and practically applicable seismic retrofitting techniques are being developed in GAZİ University Structural Mechanics Laboratory to overcome these kinds of problems.The strengthening technique proposed in this thesis is on the basis of the principle of strengthening the existing hollow brick infill walls by adding perforated steel plates on to them such that they act as cast-in-place RC infills improving lateral stiffness and behaviour. Also, the technique would not require evacuation of the building and would be applicable without causing too much disturbance to the occupant. For this purpose, thirteen ½ scaled plastered hollow brick infill walls, one being unstrengthened, were tested under reversed cyclic lateral loading simulating earthquake loading. The specimens were strengthened using perforated steel plates of three different thickness fixed on to the wall by bolts. Test parameters were the plate thickness, bolt spacing and presence of plate lapped-splices stemming from the inadequate plate length. In addition, infill wall corners were rehabilitated by three different techniques against early crushing. Strength, stiffness, energy dissipation and ductility characteristics of the specimens were examined by evaluating the test results. Test results indicated that the proposed seismic strengthening technique can be very effective in improving the seismic performance of the plastered hollow brick infill walls commonly used as partition walls in Turkey.ScienceCode: 911.1.145Keywords: Seismic Rehabilitation, Strengthening, Repair,HollowBrick Infill Wall, Perforated Steel Plate,ReinforcedConcrete Building, Reversed CyclicLateral LoadingPageNumber: 131Adviser: Assoc.Prof.Dr. Sabahattin AYKAÇAssist.Prof.Dr. Mehmet BARAN