Saber Foroushani and Yi Liu
Saber Foroushani, Saber Foroushani, MASc, Department of Civil and Resource Engineering, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, Canada, saber.foroushani@dal.ca
Yi Liu, Professor, Department of Civil and Resource Engineering, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, Canada, Yi.liu@dal.ca
ABSTRACT
This paper presents an initial experimental study of on-going research on the in-plane behaviour of an all-masonry infilled frame system and their performance in comparison with masonry infilled RC frames. An all-masonry infilled frame system is an infilled frame system where both the infill and bounding frame is constructed simultaneously and using masonry units. In this study,
masonry columns and beams were constructed from prototype masonry boundary element units and were reinforced and fully grouted, while the infill panel was constructed with half-scale standard 200 mm concrete masonry units. Six specimens were tested under monotonically increased lateral loading to failure. The results showed that all-masonry infilled frame and its RC frame counterpart exhibited similar behaviour in terms of stiffness and strength. However, while the RC framed infill showed pronounced corner crushing at failure, the masonry framed infill failed by severe diagonal cracking extending into the boundary columns. The latter appeared to have a better ability to sustain the ultimate load as displacement increased and the post-ultimate behavior was more ductile than the former. The results also showed that the use of horizontal reinforcement in all masonry infilled specimens had an insignificant effect on the ultimate load but marked impact on increasing stiffness and ductility of the frame system.
KEYWORDS: concrete masonry infills, masonry frames, RC frames, experimental study, stiffness, strength
