Studies on Vertically Irregular RC Infilled Frame Buildings

Bhosale, Avadhoot (2018) Studies on Vertically Irregular RC Infilled Frame Buildings. PhD thesis.

A regular building is defined as a building with uniformly distributed mass, stiffness, strength and structural
form. When one or more of these properties is non-uniformly distributed, either individually or in combination
with other properties in the vertical direction, the building is referred to as being vertically irregular. There are
many examples of the failure of such buildings in past earthquakes due to non-uniform distribution of structural
properties. Major international codes including ASCE/SEI 7 (2016) recognize five different classes of vertical
irregularity in multi-storeyed buildings that need special design considerations. Most inter-national design codes
either prohibit construction or recommend alternative seismic analysis and design of vertically irregular
buildings depending on the degree of irregularity and site hazard. Force-based quantities such as mass,
stiffness, and strength or geometrical quantities such as plan dimensions are used by design codes as
measures (irregularity indicators) for assessing the degree of vertical irregularity present in buildings. Previous
literature have proposed different methodologies to quantify the vertical irregularity of buildings in terms of their
elastic mode properties. However, the definition of vertical irregularity of buildings mentioned in the codes and
standards appears to be not supported by their associated seismic risk. Present study reviews the existing
provisions of quantifying vertical irregularity in the context of seismic risk and found that all the vertically
irregular buildings listed in the design codes do not pose higher seismic risk. Seismic risks of these buildings
are evaluated in terms of fragility function, drift hazard, probability of failure and design confidence level. A
concept of ‘vulnerability indicator’ in RC moment resisting vertically irregular framed buildings is proposed to
replace the existing ‘irregularity indicator’. A good correlation between the proposed indicator and associated
seismic risk is observed for different types of vertically irregular buildings.
The design codes recommend five different irregularity quantifier, one for each of the five categories of
vertically irregular building. If there is no correlation between ‘irregularity measures’ and ‘seismic safety’ exists
the purpose of estimating ‘irregularity measures’ is lost. Therefore, a direct performance indicator of seismic
risk is essential for the design code to impose special design requirement in place of presently used indirect
irregularity indicator. This study also concludes that vertical geometric irregular buildings exhibit seismic risks
lower than even a reference regular building and can be excluded from the list of special design group of
building codes.
Vertically irregular infill framed buildings are conventionally built with burnt clay brick masonry. However, with
growing environmental concern for conservation of natural resources and disposal of waste, fly ash bricks,
Autoclaved Aerated Concrete (AAC) and Cellular Lightweight Concrete (CLC) blocks are emerging as a
substitute to burnt clay bricks for the construction of masonry infill. AAC and CLC blocks have been widely
used as infilled masonry all over the world as a potential infill material due to various advantages. A study on
the effect of such modern infill materials in the seismic performance of the vertically irregular building can be
useful to ensure the safety of such buildings. However, the variability of mechanical properties related to the
modern infill masonry materials are not readily available unlike the conventional building material like steel,
concrete, clay and fly ash bricks. For this purpose, an extensive experimental programme was carried out to
determine various physical and mechanical properties of AAC and CLC block masonry and best-fit probability
distribution models are proposed. Higher order analyses such as XRD and field emission scanning electron
microscope (FESEM) are conducted to understand the morphological and microstructural differences in block
unit leading to variation in its properties. The proposed probability distributions are used to study performance
of typical vertically irregular buildings made of modern infill masonry. The seismic risk of a vertically irregular
building with AAC and CLC infill is found to be lower than that with conventional infill materials like clay and fly
ash bricks. Although clay and fly ash brick masonry have higher strength and stiffness properties, the
lightweight properties may be attributed to the lower seismic risk of buildings with AAC and CLC block
masonry. This study concludes that the use of modern lightweight infill materials can improve the building
performance in seismically active areas