Modeling of Reinforced Concrete Frames with Infill Walls Under Cyclic Loading Strengthening with CFRP

Abstract

Nowadays, using infill isolators in Reinforced Concrete (RC) structures is very common. In earlier research this infill isolators are usually considered as non-structural elements, but in recent researches it was demonstrated that infill has considerable effects on natural period, stiffness, strength and overall behavior of structure specially when it is subjected to seismic ground motions. In this study a one-bay two-story masonry infilled RC frame is considered for a laboratory sample and various layouts of Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymer (CFRP) layers have been used to retrofit and strengthen of masonry infill wall. These specimens have been modeled in ABAQUS and analyzed under cyclic loading with Finite Element Method (FEM). FEM analysis have been carried out using ABAQUS/Explicit software and analysis type have been chosen dynamic explicit. Finally, results of Finite Element Analysis have been compared against the experimental results. The effect of different CFRP configurations of retrofitting on ductility, ultimate lateral load capacity, stiffness and energy dissipation capacity of specimens have been discussed. Thereupon the best configuration has been proposed in terms of cost effectiveness and ductility. The results showed that in the frame with infill wall comparing with bare frame, load capacity increased about 277.35% and by comparing infilled frame with or without CFRP, it can be concluded that using CFRP can increase lateral load capacity of masonry infilled RC frames.