Performance assessment of infilled RC structures considering the infill masonry walls out-of-plane behaviour

Abstract

The out-of-plane (OOP) performance of infill masonry walls subjected to earthquakes is a topic of growing importance due to the significant number of collapses observed through the recent earthquakes. Nowadays is recognized by the scientific community the influence of these elements in the structural response of reinforced concrete structures subjected to seismic actions. The infills OOP behaviour depends on a series of variables and there is a lack of experimental data to understand and predict their expected seismic performance. There is a need of data to calibrate numerical models and to understand the effect of each variable such as type of masonry, boarder constrains, previous in-plane damage and insufficient support width in the infills OOP capacity. The present manuscript pretends to overview some considerations regarding the performance assessment of infills OOP performance such as based on experimental tests and numerical modeling results. A brief revision of the literature and of the international codes will be presented along the manuscript regarding this topic and will help to understand the importance of the infills OOP behaviour on the performance assessment of reinforced concrete structures.