IMPACT OF BRICK INFILL WALLS ON THE SEISMIC BEHAVIOR OF REINFORCED CONCRETE FRAMES USING FINITE ELEMENT METHOD

Infill walls can introduce changes in the dynamic characteristics of frames due to their features and their connection to the frames. Among the methods applied for modeling infill walls, micro modeling is able to model the infill wall and compound frame behaviors very close to their real time functioning, using Finite elements Method. In this paper, concrete frames and brick walls micro modeling technique, through application of the ANSYS 12 software is described firstly, followed by the software analysis results of 36 reinforced concrete frames with different number of stories and bays and various positioning patterns for inter panel walls, under the increasing cyclic lateral loads. The impact of infill walls on seismic behavior of structures including several patterns of hysteresis loops, the area under hysteresis loops (the amount of dissipated energy), ductility and primary stiffness are ultimately assessed.