EFFECT OF INFILL ON SEISMIC FRAGILITY OF REINFORCED

CONCRETE FRAMED BUILDING

SWARUP GHOSHa and SUBRATA CHAKRABORTY b

a
Ph.D. Student, Department of Civil Engineering, IIEST, Shibpur, Howrah- 711103, India, E-mail:
gh.swarup@gmail.com
b
Professor, Department of Civil Engineering, IIEST, Shibpur, Howrah- 711103, India, E-mail:
schak@civil.iiests.ac.in.
ABSTRACT – The present study deals with seismic fragility analysis of typical reinforced
concrete frame with infill masonry walls located in the Guwahati city of northeast India.
For this, a suite of ground motions is obtained which consists of eight natural ground
motions selected from the past earthquake data in the region, eight artificially generated
accelerograms and eight synthetic acceleration time histories. With the suit of ground
motions so prepared the nonlinear time history analyses is carried out of a four storey RC
framed building with masonry infill walls. The infill walls are modelled by simple and
computationally easier equivalent strut based macro-modelling with due consideration to
the presence of opening at different locations. The stiffness and strength of the infill walls
are described by means of a tri-linear relationship representing the horizontal force
displacement behaviour of the masonry infill. The seismic fragility curves are obtained by
analytical method for different configurations i.e. different size and position of the
openings in the infill walls to study the effect of infill walls on seismic safety.
Keywords – RC frame with masonry infill wall, equivalent strut model, nonlinear time
history, random pushover, seismic fragility
INTRODUCTION
Masonry infilled reinforced concrete (RC) framed buildings are the most common type of
constructions all over the world. Some of those are situated in areas with high seismicity.
However, in practice, the effect of infill in such building for seismic response analysis of
structures, is generally ignored considering those as non-structural members. Although, it
is clearly understood that the masonry infill has their own mass and stiffness which may
have significant contribution to the overall stiffness, fundamental period and the inertia
forces on the structure. The effect of infill also varies depending upon the size and positions
of the openings provided in infill for doors, windows and other purposes. As a result, it is
imperative to consider the contribution of infill on the dynamic response of structures under
earthquake induced vibration.
In the present study, the effect of masonry infill on seismic fragility of typical RC framed
buildings located in the Guwahati city of northeast India is investigated. The procedure
starts with a detailed probabilistic seismic hazard analysis (PSHA) of the considered region
from which the potential hazard level of the region is identified. Corresponding to the
identified hazard level earthquake ground motions are selected for nonlinear time history
analysis (NLTHA) of the considered structure. As the numbers of recorded ground motions
in the available strong motion database corresponding to the hazard level is very limited,
the ground motions are generated artificially by matching with the response spectra as
provided by Bureau of Indian Standard [1] and also by synthetically using stochastic point
source model [2] with the available information of site, source and path information. The
infill walls are modelled by simple and computationally easier equivalent strut based
macro-modelling with due consideration to the presence of opening at different locations.
The stiffness and strength of the infill walls are described by means of a tri-linear
relationship [3] representing the horizontal force displacement behaviour of the masonry
infill. The global nonlinear responses of the structural models are captured from NLTHA
to estimate the demand parameters. The capacity parameters are obtained from random
pushover analysis (RPA). Finally, the seismic fragility curves are obtained by analytical
seismic fragility analysis (SFA) method for different size and position of the openings in
the infill walls to study the effect of infill walls on seismic safety of such structures.
FUNDAMENTALS OF SFA
The seismic risk analysis problem is basically a time dependent reliability analysis in which
the limit state of interest is the difference between seismic demand and structural capacity
and can be mathematically expressed as: Z (XC , XD , t )  C(XC , t )  D(XD , t ) , XC and
XD are the variables governing capacity and demand and t is the time parameter.
Accordingly, the seismic risk estimate is the evaluation of the probability that the limit state
function will be negative which is basically the evolution of the following multi-
dimensional integral,
Pf   f Z ( X ) d  (1)
Z 0
Where, X is an ‘n’ dimensional vector having variables involving seismic demand and
capacity, f Z (X) is the joint probability density function (pdf) of the involved random
variables. The exact computation of the above is often computationally demanding and
various approximations are usually adopted to obtain the probability of exceeding the
different limit states of damage given a response parameter under a specific seismic
intensity measure which is known as SFA and results in fragility curves for different limit
states. In general notation the fragility can be represented as,
FR ( x)  P C  D IM  x  (2)
where, FR ( x) is the seismic fragility defined as the conditional probability that the
structural demand parameter will exceeds a threshold limit state capacity under ground
motion of some specified intensity, IM  x . Assuming that the demand parameters are
lognormally distributed, a power law relationship can be obtained between the median
demand and spectral acceleration as [4],
 mD S ( x)  a.xb (3)
a
where, ‘a’ and ‘b’ are the regression parameters need to be obtained by fitting a least square
straight line through the demand data in logarithmic scale. The conditional logarithmic
standard deviation,  D S is obtained as,
a
b 2
 (ln di  ln(a.Sa,i ))
D S  (4)
a n2
where d i and Sa,i are the drift demand and the corresponding spectral acceleration for the
record number ‘i’ within the cloud response set and ‘n’ is the number of records. Assuming
structural capacity is also lognormal with uncorrelated D and C , following the first order
reliability analysis method, fragility function can be obtained as,
 ln( x / mR ) 
FR ( x)     (5)
 R 
where, mR and  R are the median and dispersion of the fragility defined as following:
1
mR   mC / a  ,  R 
1/ b
 D S 2  C 2 where C  CR2  2
CU (6)
b a
where, mC is the median demand capacity. It is to be noted that c contains two
components of uncertainty in which the standard deviation of the capacity ( CR ) is the
aleatory component obtained from RPA and CU is the epistemic component of
uncertainty which is assumed as 0.2 in the present study [5].
SELECTION OF GROUND MOTION BIN
The most acceptable form for NLTHA of SFA of structures corresponds to the use of
recorded accelerograms. However, due to limited availability of recorded accelerograms
specific to the hazard level for the focused region, the choice of natural ground motions
here is limited to eight numbers. Thus, further accelerograms are generated artificially and
synthetically. The eight natural records are selected from the past earthquake data in the
region which covers a surface wave magnitude ranging from 6.0 to 8.0 and epicentral
distance within 300 km around the location for rock site. The artificial accelerograms are
generated compatible to the acceleration response spectra for rock and hard soil for 5%
damping [1]. Eight accelerograms are generated following the methodology proposed by
[6]. The stochastic ground motion model as proposed by [2] is used for generation of
synthetic acceleration time histories. Eight accelerograms are generated for different
magnitudes between 6.0 to 8.0 and epicentral range within 300km.
MODELLING OF MASONRY INFILL
Several studies have been carried out in last few decades to properly address the nonlinear
behaviour of masonry infill walls in RC framed building under lateral loads. Consequently,
various modelling techniques have been proposed. The available modelling strategies till
date can be primarily categorized into two different approaches i.e. micro-modelling [7]
and macro-modelling [3, 8]. Among the available macro-modelling approaches, the
simplest and computationally easier one is the ‘Equivalent Strut’ model which is used in
the present study. It consists of two diagonally opposite struts to represent the effect of
infill which can carry load only in compression [3]. The stiffness and strength of the infill
material are described by a tri-linear relationship representing the horizontal force
displacement behaviour of the masonry infill with due considerations to various positions
and percentages of infill openings. To investigate the reduction in panel stiffness due to the
presence of opening, a parametric study on different positions and percentages of infill
openings is carried out following the graphical representation provided by Asteris [8]. The
details of the model will be discussed during presentation.
NUMERICAL STUDY
A four storey four bay RC building frame with infill brick masonry located in the Guwahati
city is taken up. The building has three bays of 4.0m length and height of each storey is
3.3m. The dead load consists of self-weight of structural and non-structural members and
live load is considered 3kN/m2 for floors and 1.5kN/m2 for roof. The concrete grade is
considered to be M25 and reinforcing steel is taken TMT bars of Fe500 grade. Eight
different models of the building are investigated e.g., bare frame, frame with full masonry
infill, frames with variations in locations and sizes of openings of the infill walls. Two
different sizes of openings are considered in masonry infill, i.e. 10% and 20% of opening,
each of which is then associated with three different locations of opening, i.e. opening
position A (outside and down left the diagonal strut), opening position B (on the diagonal
strut) and opening position C (outside and up right of the diagonal strut). Thus, total six
structural models with opening in masonry infill is considered. The beams and columns
have a cross section of 0.3m x0.5m and 0.35m x 0.35m, respectively. The responses of the
structure are obtained by NLTHA using OpenSees [9]. The more details of the example
frame modelling will be discussed during presentation.
The NLTHA of the frame is carried out using twenty-four numbers of ground motion
records and the maximum inter storey drift (ISD) values are obtained for each of the ground
motion input. The power law relationship is constructed between the median maximum
ISD and spectral acceleration values. The regression parameters ‘a’ and ‘b’ are obtained by
the cloud analysis. The capacity parameters mC and CR in Eq. 6 are obtained from RPA
of the example frames. For RPA 100 random samples are generated using Latin hypercube
sampling. The details of the structural parameters considered to be random are shown in
Table 1.The IO, LS and CP performance levels described in FEMA 356 [10] are considered
as the capacity limit states and capacity parameters are obtained for each of these limit
states. With the calculated demand and capacity parameters fragility curves are generated
using Eq. 5 and presented in Fig. 1.
 Table 1: The properties of the random parameters
Uncertainty Source Distribution Type Mean C.O.V.
Concrete compressive strength Normal 25 MPa 0.21
Yield strength of steel Normal 500 MPa 0.1
Elastic modulus of concrete Log Normal 25000 MPa 0.15
Elastic modulus of steel Log Normal 2x105 MPa 0.05
Shear strength of masonry Normal 0.3 MPa 0.12
Damping ratio Normal 0.05 0.4

1.0 1.0
IO LS
0.8 0.8
Probability of Failure

Probability of Failure

0.6 0.6
a) Bare Frame Bare Frame
Full Infill b) Full Infill
0.4 10% Opening (Position A) 0.4 10% Opening (Position A)
20% Opening (Position A) 20% Opening (Position A)
10% Opening (Position B) 10% Opening (Position B)
0.2 20% Opening (Position B) 0.2 20% Opening (Position B)
10% Opening (Position C) 10% Opening (Position C)
20% Opening (Position C) 20% Opening (Position C)
0.0 0.0
0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5

Sa (T) Sa (T)

1.0
CP
0.8
Probability of Failure

0.6
c) Bare Frame
Full Infill
0.4 10% Opening (Position A)
20% Opening (Position A)
10% Opening (Position B)
0.2 20% Opening (Position B)
10% Opening (Position C)
20% Opening (Position C)
0.0
2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 4.0 4.5
Sa (T)

Fig. 1: Fragility curves for different limit states a) IO b) LS and c) CP

CONCLUSIONS
In the present study, the effect of masonry infill on seismic fragility of typical RC framed
buildings located in the Guwahati city of northeast India is demonstrated. The seismic
fragility curves obtained for different sizes and configurations of the infill openings and for
different limit states reveals that for IO limit state, which is corresponding to the elastic
limit of the structure, very small differences exist among the estimated fragilities. However,
differences increase for LS and CP limit states. For all the limit states, bare frame shows
lowest probability of failure which gradually increases for full infill frame and frames with
different percentages and positions of opening. Based on the numerical study, it is in
general realized that the masonry infill on RC framed building has significant effect on
seismic fragility and highly depended on the amount and positions of openings. Though
this study is based on the consideration of the equivalent strut method as discussed,
however, different other modelling techniques are available in literatures which can further
be explored.
NOMENCLATURE
Notation Definition Notation Definition Notation Definition
mD S Median Demand D Structural FR ( x) Seismic
a Demand fragility
D S Logarithmic dispersion C Structural IM Intensity
a of the demand Capacity Measure
REFERENCES
1. BIS, IS 1893 (Part 1): 2016, Indian Standard Criteria for Earthquake Resistant Design of
Structures, Part 1: General Provisions and Buildings (Sixth Revision), Bureau of Indian
Standards, New Delhi, India, 2016.
2. Boore, D.M., Simulation of Ground Motion Using the Stochastic Method, Pure applied
geophysics, 160, 635–676, 2003.
3. Martinelli, E., Lima, C., and De Stefano, G., A simplified procedure for Nonlinear Static analysis
of masonry infilled RC frames, Engineering Structures, 101, 591-608, 2015.
4. Jalayer, F., Direct probabilistic seismic anaysis: implementing non-linear dynamic assessments,
Ph.D. Thesis, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Stanford, CA, 2003.
5. Wen, Y.K., Ellingwood, B.R., Veneziano, D., and Bracci, J, Uncertainty modelling in earthquake
engineering, MAE Project FD-2 Report, Mid-America Earthquake Centre, USA, 2003.
6. Gasparini, D.A., and Vanmarcke, E.H., SIMQKE, a program for artificial motion generation,
user’s manual and documentation, Publication R76-4, MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts,
1976.
7. Lourenço, P.B., Computations on historic masonry structures, Progress in Structural Engineering
and Materials, 4(3), 301-319, 2002.
8. Asteris, P.G., Lateral stiffness of brick masonry infilled plane frames, Journal of Structural
Engineering, 129(8), 1071-1079, 2003.
9. McKenna, F., and Feneves, G. L., Open System for Earthquake Engineering Simulation
(OpenSees), Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Centre, University of California,
Berkeley, California, 2005.
10. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Prestandard and commentary for the seismic
rehabilitation of buildings, Rep. No. 356, Washington, DC, 2000.