COMPARISON BETWEEN THE EFFECT OF LINTEL AND LINTEL BAND ON THE GLOBAL PERFORMANCE OF LOAD BEARING WALLS AND MASONRY INFILLED RC FRAMES

Abstract

Improperly designed brick masonry walls cause undesirable effects under seismic loading in both brick masonry in-filled reinforced concrete (RC) frames and masonry load bearing wall structures. Doors and windows (openings) are unavoidable components in brick masonry in-filled RC structures and masonry load bearing wall structures because of its functional and ventilation requirements. The presence of openings in brick masonry walls reduces the lateral stiffness and strength of the wall in both RC and load bearing structures, which changes the actual behavior of structure. If these openings are located in the restricted zones like areas within middle two thirds of a wall wall, then the wall needs to be strengthened by providing necessary horizontal/vertical (bands) structural elements such as lintel or lintel bands around them. Lack of such structural elements may cause the structure to undergo severe damage during the earthquake event. In this paper, two case studies, (a) the presence of openings in infill wall with or without lintel and lintel band (b) the presence of openings in load bearing wall with or without lintel and lintel band is studied, to know the nonlinear response of brick masonry in-filled RC frame and load bearing wall under seismic loading. To understand the behaviour of the infilled frames and load bearing wall, a two dimensional (2D) infilled frame and load bearing wall is modeled and analyzed using a tool based on Applied Element Method (AEM). Nonlinear static pushover (SPO) is performed to estimate capacity of the models.