PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OF MASONRY INFILL WALLS

Abstract

Infill walls are very common structure present around us but their significance was always overlooked leading to the premature collapse of building during the laterals loads such as earthquake and wind loads. After many drastic failures of masonry buildings, civil engineers try to find the answer for the failure of these buildings. Later, studies show that the infill walls play an important role when the lateral loads are applied on to the structure. Engineers also found that it is very difficult to conduct experimental studies by changing different parameters of the infill walls. So, researchers have been finding other simpler methods to analyse the infill walls to get the actual behaviour of the structure under lateral loading. This leads to the formulation of numerical modelling so that the behaviour can be easily analysed by simply changing the parameters as well as the material properties. This thesis paper is set out to study the effect of lateral loading on an unconfined masonry, effect of confining frame, effect of lintel beams and effect of size of openings and their orientations using ANSYS software. Performance of each models were studied by comparing the load carrying capacity, initial lateral stiffness and energy dissipation capacity.