Study the reinforced concrete frame with brick masonry infill due to lateral loads

In the building construction, framed structures are frequently used due to ease of construction and rapid progress of work. Masonry infill panels have been widely used as interior and exterior partition walls for aesthetic reasons and functional needs. When infill walls are omitted in a particular storey, a soft storey is formed compared to much stiffer other stories. The masonry infill has been modeled by equivalent struts. Normally in structural analysis it is considered that the Equivalent Static Analysis is more conservative against ground shaking for regular structures or structures of smaller height. In this paper the behavior of reinforced concrete (R.C.) frames with brick masonry infill for various parametric changes have been studied to observe their influences in deformation patterns of the frame. The present study is also aimed at findings out the effect of soft storey on frame structures due to horizontal loading. In both cases of wind and earthquake loads, if number of bay increases, then the deflection eventually decreases. As the story level of a building frame increases, deflection due to lateral loads naturally increases due to additional lateral loads. Deflection increases linearly if the span of bay increases linearly because of linearly increased loads. Deflection for a soft storey building frame is 1.4 to 2.0 times greater than that observed excluding the soft storey effect. Deflection for R.C. frames with 5 inch wall thickness is observed 10 to 20% higher than that for frames with 10 inch wall thickness. As the beam and column size increases, deflection pattern decreases with increased stiffness. Two different theories for modeling the equivalent struts (Mainstone and Saneinejad theory) have used in this work and these two different theories of Equivalent Strut Method have little bearing on the variations of results