Abstract:

Infill walls are included in the calculations as linear load in reinforced concrete buildings, ignoring their contribution to horizontal strength. For this reason, the structural behaviour foreseen at the design stage does not reflect reality. The filling walls can cause destructive effects in our country, where the severe earthquake danger is. In this study, 6 building models with different features were designed to examine the infill wall effects in reinforced concrete buildings. Two different ground-storey heights are considered to reveal the possible soft-storey irregularity that may occur due to the infill wall effects. Within the scope of the study, three different reinforced concrete building models are designed to empty frame, linear loaded frame and linear load + equivalent pressure bar frame. Although the linear load + equivalent pressure bar systems are compared with empty and linear loaded systems, a decrease in period values, peak point displacements and effective relative storey displacement values, an increase in spectral acceleration values and base shear forces, and the formation of soft storey irregularity are determined. Therefore, it has been concluded that modelling the infill walls with equivalent pressure bars in reinforced concrete building models will give more accurate results in terms of building behaviour.

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