Improvement of Structural Robustness Against Progressive Collapse of the Structure using In-Fill Walls

Abstract

Despite the increasing concern in progressive
collapse resistant design and analysis of
reinforced concrete building it was triggered by
accidental and man-made extreme events
occurred over the last couple of decades. Only a
few studies, especially numerical ones have been
carried out so far on the role of masonry infill
walls on it. Much the same as on account of
seismic tremor building application, infills are
typically considered as non-structural or
architectural components. Thus, its resistance is
omitted; likewise, present design norms do not
give explicit signs concerning this point. Although
such considerations lead to an ease in work of
design and analysis of structural elements, it may
also give rise to misleading and overly
conservative results, considering masonry-infills
also may result in additional vertical resistance.
Consequently, this article gives the results of an
enormous number of progressive collapse
simulations planned for evaluating the impacts of
infill walls on the vertical load-carrying limits of
reinforced concrete frames for various areas of
damage. Thus, it is important to evaluate the
interaction between the structural elements and
surrounding frames at different stages of the
response. The present article portrays the
outcomes after validation of the proposed model
which was utilized to anticipate behavioral
changes in the reaction of infilled reinforced
concrete structures, as a result of parametric
varieties in the geometry of the selected models.
Counterpart bare frames were also analyzed to
present a vice-versa comparison in terms of
resistance and demand capacity of both the
structures.