Effect of Infilled Frame on Seismic Performance of Concrete Moment-Resisting Frame Buildings

The infilled frame in the construction industry is divided into two types of structural and non-structural ones. Masonry infilled frames are used because of the architecture performance or the structural performance. Building frames in the peripheral and intermediates sections of the building are filled with masonry walls as a separator or sound and thermal insulation, which causes the difference in the behavior of these frames with the empty frames. This type of walls is called the infilled frame and the mechanism consists of a frame and infilled frame is called an infilled reinforced frame. Infilled frames, especially in the event of moderate and severe earthquakes, collide with their environment frame, and the interaction created between them changes the behavior of the concrete frame. In this study, using the ABAQUS software, an analytical study was carried out on the effect of masonry infilled frame and its impact on the seismic behavior of reinforced concrete frames with moderate height. After modeling the 4-story building frame and defining the plastic range for its materials, the structure under the dynamic load of the earthquake is mapped with accelerometer and horizontal and vertical load of earthquakes. According to the results, the structure energy has increased significantly after applying the infilled frame effect, which is due to the increasing the stiffness of the frame and the absorption of more force from the earthquake. Also, the final strain in the middle of the wall is due to an increase in the displacement of the structure with increasing the height, and the other reason is due to the lower wall stiffness in a vertical direction along it.