Alex Brodsky, Oded Rabinovitch, and David Z. Yankelevsky
Alex Brodsky, PhD student, Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Technion Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa 32000, Israel, brod@technion.ac.il
Oded Rabinovitch, Professor, Abel Wolman Chair in Civil Engineering, Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Technion Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa 32000, Israel, cvoded@technion.ac.il
David Z. Yankelevsky, Professor Emeritus, Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Technion Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa 32000, Israel, davidyri@technion.ac.il
ABSTRACT
The interaction of unreinforced masonry infill walls with the surrounding frame is the key mechanism for the composite action of the structural element. This interaction is of importance under all types of loads but it is especially important under extreme loads such as earthquakes, vehicle impact, blast action etc. Due to the complex interaction and the resulting lack of knowledge regarding the composite action of the infill wall and the frame, the masonry infill wall is commonly considered in the structural design through oversimplified methods. Nevertheless, the interaction loads affect the infill wall behaviour and at the same time, they affect the failure mode of the frame. Therefore, it is crucial to characterize, understand, and evaluate this interaction and to establish models that can quantify the composite behaviour and assess the failure mechanism and the capacity of the composite system. Achieving these goals can improve the design tools for new buildings, enhance the assessment methods of existing buildings, and enable the development of advanced computational models. Aiming at these goals, this paper looks into the complex interaction phenomenon. The paper adopts an experimental methodology and an experimental setup that includes a masonry infill wall surrounded by a steel frame is used as the main experimental platform. The new experimental apparatus provides unique parameters of the interaction including the detection of the contact zone between the masonry wall and the frame and the assessment of the magnitude and its distribution of the contact tractions. This paper aims at describing the above and a few of the new findings.
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