Nasiri, Ehsan1 and Liu, Yi2
1 PhD Candidate, Department of Civil and Resource Engineering, Dalhousie University, 5248 Morris St., Halifax, NS, Canada, Ehsan.Nasiri@dal.ca
2 Professor, Department of Civil and Resource Engineering, Dalhousie University, 5248 Morris St., Halifax, NS, Canada, yi.liu@dal.ca
ABSTRACT
The literature review revealed that masonry infills bounded by either steel or RC frames may develop out-of-plane strength much higher than their flexural strength due to arching action. However, the available technical information on this subject is limited and the current Canadian masonry standard S304-14 does not contain design equations to calculate the out-of-plane strength of masonry infills. Several existing analytical methods were largely based on the empirical test results conducted mainly on steel frames and they fail to capture the effects of different geometric and mechanical behaviour of masonry infills, and boundary conditions between the masonry infill and the frame. This paper presents the development of a finite element model for simulating out-of-plane behaviour of concrete masonry infilled RC frames. Developed in ABAQUS software, this FE model adopted a three dimensional simplified micro modeling technique considering detailed geometry and nonlinear characteristics of concrete, steel and masonry units. The model was validated against experimental results of two specimens including one regular infilled frame and one with opening in the infill. The comparison between the FE and experimental results in terms of ultimate strength, load vs. displacement response, and cracking and failure modes is described in the paper. The FE model developed in this study was found to be capable of simulating the out-of-plane behaviour and strength of masonry infilled RC frames and capturing the cracking pattern and failure modes with reasonable accuracy.
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