Effect of Infill Walls on the Drift Behavior of Reinforced Concrete Frames Subjected to Lateral-Load Reversals

Four-story, single-bay, 1/5 scaled reinforced concrete frames were tested with and without infill walls. Frames were subjected to pseudo-static cyclic loading. In addition, impact hammer measurements were made to obtain the natural frequencies and modal shapes at certain drift levels. It was observed that infill walls cause major changes on both the stiffness and the drift behavior of the frames. Effect of observed changes can be either advantageous or disadvantageous depending on failure mode. Results showed that the distribution of drift that is based on the mode shapes has higher local concentrations than the distribution observed under forced static conditions.