Investigation of filling wall effect on damages in reinforced concrete buildings affected by earthquakes; 30 Ekim 2020 İzmir earthquake case study

On October 30th of 2020, 14:51, İzmir city was hit by an earthquake of Mw = 6.6 magnitude. this earthquake caused significant damage Bayraklı, Karşıyaka and Bornova districts. Structural damage and life losses were observed to be concentrated in Bayraklı region of Izmir. 12 reinforced concrete buildings were collapsed in Bayraklı. Once we pay attention to the buildings that were destroyed in the past earthquakes, it is seen that the damaged buildings are not very high-rise buildings, generally the lower floors of which are car parks, commercial enterprises and there are no infill walls on the ground floors. This situation has also been encountered in the buildings destroyed in the 30 October 2020 İzmir earthquake. In this study, the effects of infill walls in reinforced concrete buildings under earthquake effect were investigated. For this purpose, a building damaged in the 2020 Izmir earthquake was examined. The building discussed in the study was modeled in the SAP2000 V22 finite element program in two different ways, with and without infill walls, using the real parameters of the building. As a result of the study, the results of the analysis were compared and it was observed that the infill walls positively affected the features of the building such as period, ground story shear force, column bearing capacity, inter-story drift ratio, and Base shear forces on the ground floors, and increased the base shear force.