Abstract
Recent earthquakes highlighted the impact of masonry infill walls on structural resilience. Irregular placement of these walls amplifies adverse effects, causing substantial material and human losses. Studies and post-earthquake assessments stress the need to consider infill walls in design and evaluation. This paper investigates the presence of the soft storey in the reinforced concrete structures when the contribution of the infill walls. The results obtained from the investigation of the existence of the soft first storey are discussed using an approximate method that relies on the results of the pushover analysis based on the fiber-section-based macro-modeling was used to model the infill walls. Thanks to the results obtained, infill walls significantly enhance the resistance of weak column—strong beam-designed reinforced concrete frames, with an impressive 250% increase. In contrast, this effect is more moderate at 40% for strong column—weak beam-designed reinforced concrete frames. Notably, uniform distribution of infill walls along the structure’s height, compared to bare structures, has no impact on soft-storey emergence in the same seismic zone, regardless of column-beam strength. In low seismic intensity regions, infill walls dissipate energy, leading to consistent seismic behavior for uniform infill distribution in both strong and weak column configurations. Despite column strength, open ground storey structures remain susceptible to soft first storey emergence, highlighting the indispensable role of infill walls in reinforced concrete structural design.
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Abdesselam, I., Guettala, S. & Zine, A. Fiber-based modeling for investigating the existence of a soft storey for masonry infilled reinforced concrete structures. Asian J Civ Eng 25, 1949–1965 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42107-023-00887-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42107-023-00887-9