INFLUENCE OF INFILL WALLS ON REDUCTION OF THE SEISMIC GAP

Abstract

Earthquake induced pounding is one of the main causes of severe structural damage. Pounding is a phenomenon that normally occur between two adjacent buildings with different dynamic properties. Pounding can occur in one of two forms either over a story level or over inter story level in which slab of one building hit the column of the other building. The main cause of the pounding phenomena is due to the insufficient separation distance between adjacent buildings. This could be due to a lack of accurate calculation or due to the expensive price of land plots. Infill walls are normally used in reinforced concrete buildings as a nonstructural element, they mainly used for architectural purposes. However, the use of the infill wall is proved to have many advantages in terms of improving the overall structural capacity, stiffness, and ductility. The use of the infill wall in the modeling is almost not mentioned by any of the international codes. The main purpose of this research is to use the infill wall to reduce the separation distance between adjacent buildings. Furthermore, we will mention in detail the factors to define the infill wall and methods of modeling. In addition, the influence of different parameters on the buildings, like a number of stories, wall compressive strength, wall thickness, percentage of infill in elevation, and wall aspect ratio. Results indicate that the infill wall has a significant effect on improving the lateral stiffness of the building. Moreover, it has a significant effect on reducing the separation distance.