A STUDY OF EFFECT OF INFILL MATERIAL ON SEISMIC PERFORMANCE OF RC BUILDINGS

The construction of RC buildings with unreinforced infill wall is a regular practice in India. Infill panels have usually been made of heavy rigid materials, such as clay bricks or concrete blocks. However, more lightweight and flexible infill options such as AAC (aerated light weight concrete) blocks are now obtainable in India to be used as masonry infill (MI) material in reinforced concrete (RC) framed buildings. It has been accepted that infill materials considerably influence the seismic performance of the infilled framed structures. Number of researchers studied the behaviour of infilled RC frames experimentally and analytically. Most of the research work carried out in this area was paying attention on parameters such as the variation of distribution of masonry infill and the stiffness of frame elements. Though it has been implicit that the infill’s play important role in enhancing the lateral stiffness of complete structures. There are plenty of researches done so far for infilled frames, however variation in infill materials are still the topic of interest. In the present study an investigation has been made to study the behaviour of RC frames with both AAC block and conventional clay bricks infill with varying percentage of opening subjected to seismic loads.