Experimental And Analytical Study Of Seismic Performance Of Lightweight Masonry-infilled RC Frames

The masonry-infilled reinforced concrete frames are kind of complex hybridstructures,which are widely used in China currently. In recent years,there wereseveral earthquakes have occurred that a large number of masonry-infilled RCframes were severely damaged and caused huge casualties and property losses. Butthe Chinese Seismic code considers the infilled walls as non-structural elements,and takes into account the infills just through providing a reduction factor for theperiod of this kind of structures. But under the seismic action,the interactionbetween the infills and the frame is very complex. Furthermore,China has graduallyban the production and use of solid clay bricks,and new wall materials (such aslightweight blocks,etc.) are becoming the main infill material instead. But thedomestic study of lightweight masonry infilled RC frame structure has not beencarried out so far.In order to compensate for the domestic blank in this respect,In this paper,apiece of lightweight masonry-infilled RC frame and a piece of RC frame have beendesigned,Two frames are all full-scale models,conducted seismic performancecomparison experiment under the constant vertical load and horizontal low cycleloading. Through the test,this paper carries on the comprehensive comparison andanalysis of the structure failure process and failure pattern,characteristic curve,skeleton curve of restoring force,bearing capacity,energy dissipation capacity,displacement ductility,stiffness degradation and strength degradation of the twomodels. Then the paper summarizes the interaction rule between RC frame and thelightweight masonry infill and comprehensive assessment of how lightweightmasonry infill walls influent the seismic performance of RC frames,and providestheoretical basis for the lightweight masonry infilled RC frames Applied to theengineering as well.On the basis of experiment,a new finite element method is applied to simulatelightweight masonry-infilled RC frame structures under low cyclic loading test inthis paper. The lightweight masonry-infilled RC frame structure finite elementmodels are established through the nonlinear finite element software ABAQUS,then the paper compare and analyse the seismic behavior of the finite elementmodel and the test model,To verify the rationality of the numerical simulationmethod in this paper.