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Structural significance of Pneumatic Interface in Masonry infilled RC

frames
A. Selvakumar a, V. Thirumurugan b,⇑, K.S. Satyanarayanan c
a
Department of Civil Engineering, SRM Institute of Science and Technology, SRM Nagar, Kattankulathur – 603 203, Tamil Nadu, India
b
Associate Director-Campus Life (Adjunct Faculty), Department of Civil Engineering, SRM Institute of Science and Technology, SRM Nagar, Kattankulathur – 603 203, Tamil Nadu, India
c
Department of Civil Engineering, SRM Institute of Science and Technology, SRM Nagar, Kattankulathur – 603 203, Tamil Nadu, India

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Reinforced concrete framed construction is a common method adopted in developing countries. Failure of
Available online xxxx these structures in seismic regions indicate that unconfined interaction between the infill and the RC
bounding frame is a prime cause. During these failures infill failure leads to collapse of the structure.
Keywords: Since, masonry work in the frame increases the stiffness of otherwise Bare frame. Infills in these struc-
Infilled frames tures altered the ductile behavior of RC bare frame. To avoid this, an interface medium can be provided
Pneumatic Interface between the masonry work and the frame to significantly change the impact on masonry work under in-
Finite element Analysis
plane static-cyclic loading condition. In this study finite element analysis is carried out to study the struc-
Ductility
Masonry Infill
tural performance of masonry infill and RC frame under static cyclic loading with and without interface
Stiffness medium which can change its stiffness. Such a medium is made up of tube filled with air, called as pneu-
matic medium. The structural parameters of masonry infilled RC frame with pneumatic interface with
varying pressure is analyzed and compared with RC Bare frame and masonry infilled RC frame, under sta-
tic monotonic loading.
Ó 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the 5th International Con-
ference on Recent Advances in Material Chemistry.

1. Introduction
High rise buildings are most common in modern construction
practices. These buildings are highly prone to seismic activity than
that of short buildings. Tall buildings are designed to withstand
under seismic activity too. In designing of these structures main
frame structure is designed for all the loading requirement.
Masonry work in such buildings is mostly for partitioning the
spaces and not as load carrying member. Hence masonry walls
are not considered in designing and analysis. In practice the
masonry work also takes place in energy absorption and energy
dissipation of such structures. It is essential to analyze the struc-
ture to understand the performance with and without the masonry
work. Reinforced concrete frame is ductile in nature and masonry
work is brittle in nature. The combined interaction between frame
work and masonry work significantly alters the strength and struc-
tural behaviors under different loading conditions. The masonry
works in bounding frames alter the structural parameters by
⇑ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: vthirumurugan@gmail.com (V. Thirumurugan).
changing its strength and also changed the dynamic characteristics
of such structures by altering its stiffness. From the past five dec-
ades the in-plane and out-of-plane performances of these frames
have been analyzed.
The most general method of failure is identified at the loading
diagonal in which tensile cracks are developed in diagonal direc-
tion followed by the formation of a diagonal strut at loading diag-
onal which causes corner crushing of masonry at the ends of the
formed strut [1,4,6,9,14]. To simulate the stiffness of the frames
an equivalent diagonal strut concept is developed to replace the
infill as diagonal strut at loading diagonal. The bounding frames
act as confinement to the masonry [2,5,6]. since the infills are con-
fined by bounding frame arching effect of infill occurred in out-of-
plane action. The degree of arching effect is highly depended upon
compressive strength of masonry, slenderness of masonry, stiffness
of bounding frame and aspect ratio of frame [2,3,17,18,21,24]. It is
clear that infills are participating in load sharing in axial, lateral
and out-of-plane loading and these combined loading action
occurs during an earthquake. Failures in masonry work due to lat-
eral loading reduces the strength of infill in out-of-plane action
[3,7,8,11-13,15,16,19,20,22] and Furtado et al. [20] stated that

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matpr.2021.06.328
2214-7853/Ó 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the 5th International Conference on Recent Advances in Material Chemistry.

Please cite this article as: A. Selvakumar, V. Thirumurugan and K.S. Satyanarayanan, Structural significance of Pneumatic Interface in Masonry infilled RC
frames, Materials Today: Proceedings, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matpr.2021.06.328