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Infill Walls as a Spine to Enhance the Seismic

Performance of Non-Ductile Reinforced Concrete
Frames
Conference Paper December 2009
DOI: 10.1061/41084(364)100

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INFILL WALLS AS A SPINE TO ENHANCE THE SEISMIC

PERFORMANCE OF NON-DUCTILE REINFORCED CONCRETE FRAMES
S. Gnay1, M. Korolyk2, D. Mar3, K.M. Mosalam4 , and J. Rodgers5
1

Postdoctoral Researcher, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering,

University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-1710, USA, email:
selimgunay@berkeley.edu
2
Project Engineer, SE, Tipping Mar + associates, 1906 Shattuck Ave, Berkeley, CA
94704, USA, email: mike.korolyk@tippingmar.com
3
Principal, SE, Tipping Mar + associates, 1906 Shattuck Ave, Berkeley, CA 94704,
USA, email: david.mar@tippingmar.com
4
Professor and Vice Chair, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering,
University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-1710, USA, email:
mosalam@ce.berkeley.edu
5
Project Manager, GeoHazards International, 200 Town and Country Village, Palo
Alto, CA 94301, USA, e-mail: rodgers@geohaz.org
ABSTRACT
This paper reports the results of an investigation on the efficacy of using rocking
spines of strengthened infill walls as a retrofit measure for non-ductile reinforced
concrete (RC) frames with unreinforced masonry (URM) infill walls. The study
examines the effects of spines of strengthened URM infill walls on the behavior of
the RC frame, with particular emphasis on whether spines could reduce the tendency
to form a soft story mechanism. For this purpose, a nine story frame with five bays is
selected to represent complex multi-story behavior, where the collapse of stiff infill
walls may lead to the formation of a soft story mechanism. The effect of the proposed
retrofit is investigated through nonlinear static and dynamic analyses. Fragility
relationships are obtained for the frames using pseudo-acceleration corresponding to
the first mode as the intensity measure and maximum interstory drift ratio as the
response variable. For the analyses, a progressive collapse algorithm, previously
developed and implemented into the object-oriented open system for earthquake
engineering simulation (OpenSees) is utilized and the interaction between the inplane strength of the infill wall and its out-of-plane strength is taken into
consideration. Analyses show that infill retrofit with rocking spines provides
significant improvement in the seismic performance of non-ductile RC frames.
INTRODUCTION
Non-ductile reinforced concrete (RC) frames with unreinforced masonry (URM)
infill walls are one of the worlds most common types of seismically vulnerable
buildings. Recent earthquakes in Turkey, Taiwan, India, Algeria, Pakistan, China, and
Italy have caused these buildings to collapse and kill people inside them. In many

emerging countries, vulnerable infilled frame buildings continue to be built at a rapid

rate in order to keep up with urban population growth, and are major contributors to
the increasing levels of global earthquake risk. Thousands of these buildings housing
millions of people crowd the streets of earthquake-threatened mega-cities such as
Karachi, Delhi, and Jakarta. Many buildings of this type that predate modern codes
are also present in cities of developed-country. Regardless of their location, these
buildings inherent seismic vulnerabilities are often exacerbated by configuration
problems related to the non-uniform distribution of infill walls. For instance, many
buildings have a soft story created by commercial space (shops) or parking at the
ground floor.
Understanding how these buildings behave and developing cost-effective seismic
retrofit solutions are critically important to reducing global earthquake risk.
GeoHazards International is working to reduce the hazards such existing buildings
pose in Pakistan by building the capacity of universities to teach the requisite analysis
and design skills to local practicing professionals and students. This research effort
grew out of project team members experiences developing materials to teach seismic
behavior, analysis, and retrofit concepts using typical Karachi buildings as examples.
The goal of this research effort is to develop a cost-effective retrofit solution that can
be applied in cities of emerging country to prevent building collapses and save lives.
ILLUSTRATING THE PROBLEM
It is important to recognize that not all configurations of URM infill buildings
behave in the same fashion, and it is also possible to have a particular infill frame in a
building pose a significant risk while other frames in the same building do not. There
are several possible modes of lateral deformation that can occur in many
combinations. This paper considers rocking, column/beam flexure/shear hinging, and
infill shearing. Among these three, it was determined that rocking behavior is
desirable because the other two modes tend to concentrate deformations (and thereby
damage) in a small number of story levels, usually near the bottom of the structure.
This effect can lead to soft-story collapse at a relatively small amount of roof
displacement. By contrast, rocking behavior imposes uniform (linear) deformations
over the height of the structure, thus making better use of upper structural
components to dissipate energy and reducing the probability of collapse.
There is interplay among the properties of a structure that determines what will
be the governing mode of deformation. Three parameters were chosen in order to
illustrate how varying these parameters affects the mode of deformation: magnitude
of gravity loading, infill strength, and column shear capacity. The geometry of the
structure was kept constant for simplicity: a nine-story, five-bay, and twodimensional frame was modeled using CSI Perform3d. The properties of the frame
resemble the Bombiya Arcade Building in Karachi, Pakistan. The story height is 3.6
m; story mass is 60 tons for all the stories, and bay width is 3.0 m for all the bays.
Cross-section sizes and reinforcement detailing of the columns and beams are
indicated in Figure 1. Figure 2 shows the deformations of each version of the model.
Figure 2a represents a relatively light-weight structure as one might have for a
wall that supports itself and a small amount of tributary gravity load. The infill

strength corresponds to the properties given in the Poor column in ASCE/SEI 41-06
(2008) Table 7-1, Default Lower-Bound Masonry Properties. The column shear
capacity is set at about 10 f c [psi units]. The figure illustrates a desirable rocking
behavior, even without retrofit.
Figure 2b represents a relatively heavy-weight structure as one might have for a
wall that supports not only itself but a large amount of tributary gravity load. The
only difference between the frames illustrated in 2a and 2b is that the model shown in
Figure 2b has twice the gravity loading. This increase in gravity load causes the mode
of deformation to change from the desirable rocking mechanism to the undesirable
soft-story mechanism.
Figure 2c represents a relatively heavy-weight structure with relatively strong
infills and columns weak in shear. The infill strength was set according to the Good
properties in ASCE/SEI 41-06 Table 7-1, and the column shear capacity was reduced
to about 7.5 f c [psi units]. This mode of failure may still be considered soft-story,
but by a mixture of infill and column-shear failures.
Beams
200 mm
4 #7
610
mm

Stirrups
#3@130
mm
2 #7

External Columns
200 mm
460
mm

6 #7
long. bars
Stirrups
#3@130
mm

Internal Columns
305 mm
610
mm

12 #7
long. bars
Stirrups
#3@130
mm

Figure 1. Cross-sections and the reinforcement detailing of the columns and beams.

(c) Heavy-weight,
(b) Heavy-weight,
(a) Light-weight, weak
strong infills and weak
weak infills and strong
infills and strong
columns.
columns.
columns.
Figure 2. Deformation Modes: Rocking, Soft-Story, and Column Shear

In reality, one would expect structures with URM infilled frames to exist
somewhere within the spectrum of what is illustrated in Figure 2. Buildings in two
different geographical locations will have different material properties and perhaps
qualities of construction, and gravity load demands will vary for different infill
frames even within the same structure. Thus, it is warranted to study structures and
their frames on an individual basis. This paper will propose a retrofit strategy that
changes the deformation mode from the soft-story mechanisms shown in Figures 2b
and 2c to the more desirable rocking mechanism shown in Figure 2a.
PROPOSED RETROFIT METHOD

The proposed retrofit scheme consists of augmenting a vertical bay of URM infill
walls with mesh reinforcement and concrete (Figures 3 and 4). Strengthening one bay
of the infill wall in this manner creates a relatively stiff spine that imposes uniform
lateral displacements and protects against the soft-story mechanism. By intentionally
leaving the foundations unchanged, it is expected that there will be rotation at the
base of the retrofitted spine with very little induced moment. In fact, the forces that
the spine must resist are limited to what is needed to redistribute deformations that
would otherwise concentrate within a single story.
The masonry material used for the infill walls varies greatly in type and
engineering properties from country to country, and typically depends on what is
locally available and cost-effectiveness. The dowels that connect the new concrete
veneer to the existing infill are the critical connections that need to be designed based
on the specific infill material in question. Thus the proposed retrofit scheme can be
adapted to any type of infill material.

Figure 3. Elevation of Typical URM

Infilled Frame

Figure 4. Elevation of Retrofitted

URM Infilled Frame

Details of how the retrofit could be implemented are shown in Figures 5 and 6.
Ideally, a middle bay would be selected to retrofit within the frame elevation. This
will ensure symmetric behavior and avoid potential issues that may arise with
excessive collector forces. Once the bay has been chosen, an array of holes must be
drilled into the face of the existing masonry in order to place rebar dowels with
epoxy. These holes need to be deep enough so that the epoxy can engage the
thickness of the existing masonry, but they cannot be excessively deep or large, or
they may crack the masonry and make the epoxy bond ineffective. Holes also must be
drilled along the beams at the top, the slab at the bottom, and also along the columns
on each side of the selected bay, i.e. the four boundaries of the new retrofitted bay at
each story. The intent of these dowels is to provide a means of shear transfer into the
new spine, not to transfer larger moments to the base. Thus, lapping vertical dowels
from story to story is not necessary.

Figure 5. Typical Retrofit section

Once the holes are drilled and the reinforcement is set, the new concrete may be
placed. This may either be poured in place or shot, whichever is best for the project. It
should be considered that using shotcrete requires somewhat greater care to achieve
adequate quality.

Figure 6. Plan Section at Existing Column.

MODELING OF RETROFIT METHOD FOR STATIC ANALYSIS

The models that exhibited soft-story mechanisms discussed above were modified
with elastic concrete struts and rebar ties to represent the retrofitted condition. The
results of how the retrofit affected the two different soft-story mechanisms are
presented in Figures 7 and 8 for nonlinear static analysis with uniform lateral forces.
As indicated previously, if the gravity loading on an URM infill frame is small
enough, rocking behavior may result. Figure 7 shows the pushover behavior of the asbuilt frame with light gravity loading. Notice that the structure essentially rotates as a
rigid body about the bottom right corner of the frame. Even though the infill material
model is the lower bound of strength and stiffness, and exhibits failure in several
areas (indicated by the red diagonal lines), the as-built frame is able to withstand
significant deformation demands with virtually no loss of lateral strength.
By contrast, the as-built frame with heavier gravity loading exhibits markedly
less deformation capacity; much of the deformation is concentrated in the bottommost story. It shows deformation capacity less than half of the lightly loaded frame.
It was considered that perhaps it would be adequate to install the new spine over
part of the height of the structure rather than the full height. Two versions of the
model were outfitted with the spine: one with only the bottom level retrofitted (L01)
and another with the bottom three levels retrofitted (L03). Retrofitting only the
bottom level caused the soft-story mechanism to move up to the next level, increasing
strength but not the deformation capacity. Retrofitting the bottom three levels
changed the deformation pattern to the desirable rocking mechanism. There is clearly
a drop in strength near 2% roof drift that occurs when the URM infills adjacent to the
spine crush, and the uniformity of the drift pattern causes all infills to crush near the
same drift. Nonetheless, the structure exhibits stable deformation without additional
strength loss following infill failure. Therefore, a minimum length of the spine along
the building height is necessary to be determined for proper effectiveness of the
introduced spine.
Figure 8 shows the results of retrofitting the frame susceptible to column shear
failure. The as-built condition exhibits significant strength loss as the bottom right
column shears first. Interior infill panels and columns compensate but eventually near
1.5% instability is reached. Retrofitting the structure with the spine improves the
post-yield behavior, but it does not protect against column shear failure. It should be
noted that this scenario may not be very realistic given that many of the URM infilled
frame buildings will not have infills strong enough to justify the Good material
properties given in ASCE/SEI 41-06 Table 7-1. This highlights that it is important to

study what mechanism applies for each given frame in each structure under
consideration. Nonetheless, even as the column shear failure occurs, concentration of
the lateral deformation is avoided by the presence of the spine. Thus, loss of gravity
load-carrying capacity is less likely than that of the as-built condition.

Figure 7. Pushover Comparison, Weak Infills

Figure 8. Pushover Comparison, Weak Columns

MODELING OF RETROFIT METHOD FOR DYNAMIC ANALYSIS

OpenSees is utilized for modeling the nine story frame described above. URM
infill walls are modeled using the model described by Kadysiewski and Mosalam
(2009). In this model, the interaction between the in-plane strength of the wall and its
out-of-plane strength is taken into consideration and each infill panel is represented
by a single diagonal beam-column element, the cross-section of which is discretized
by strategically locating a collection of nonlinear fiber elements to satisfy the
intended interaction. Details of this modeling approach and its implementation in
OpenSees (Mazzoni at al., 2004) can be found in (Mosalam and Gnay, 2009).
Since URM infill walls are brittle and prone to early failure and do not physically
exist after failure, they are very suitable to be considered in progressive collapse
analysis. The failure of the infill walls modeled as described above is implemented in
a previously developed progressive collapse algorithm (Talaat and Mosalam, 2009).
This progressive collapse algorithm has been developed by using the direct element
removal approach which is based on dynamic equilibrium and the resulting transient
change in the system kinematics. For the failure criteria of URM infill walls and the
strengthened infill walls, the interaction curve between the in-plane and out-of-plane
collapse prevention limit state displacements are utilized (Kadysiewski and Mosalam,
2009). Details of the implementation of the infill wall failure into the aforementioned
progressive collapse analysis can be found in (Mosalam and Gnay, 2009).
Strengthened URM infill walls are modeled as two elastic diagonal struts with
only axial degrees of freedom. Stiffness of these struts are calculated by modifying
the infill wall strut stiffness equation in ASCE/SEI 41-06 for a composite section of
masonry and reinforced concrete and distributed equally to each of the two struts.
Springs which have infinitely high stiffness and strength in compression and zero
strength in tension are employed for modeling the boundary conditions in the vertical
direction at the base. In this way, lifting of the foundation due to the rocking caused
by the strengthened URM infill wall as a spine can be simulated.
Force-based beam-column element (nonlinearBeamColumn) is employed for
beams and columns with five integration points. Material models designated as
Concrete02 and Steel02 in OpenSees are used to model concrete (fc' = 20 MPa) and
steel (fy = 410 MPa) uniaxial behavior, respectively.
Nonlinear shear springs are placed at the top and bottom of columns using
zerolength elements. The envelope force deformation relationship of these shear
springs are defined by a linear relationship up to the shear force capacity, then with a
negative slope equal to 1% of the initial stiffness until the residual shear force which
is set as 10% of the shear capacity. The enveloping force is set to remain constant
after this point. The hysteresis rule for cyclic response is defined with moderate
degradation. The reason of placing shear springs both at the top and bottom of
columns is related to the local lateral forces transferred by the diagonal elements
representing the infill walls separately at the top and bottom.
Story mass are lumped at the nodes at the story levels. Mass and tangential
stiffness proportional Rayleigh damping (5% of critical) is used with constants
calculated by using the first and third mode periods. It is noted that first mode periods
of the as-built and retrofitted frames are 0.98 and 0.93 sec, respectively.

Out-of-plane (OOP) translational elastic springs are placed at the story levels to
represent the frames in the transverse direction. Stiffness of OOP springs are adjusted
such that periods in longitudinal and transverse directions are the same.
In the as-built cases, URM infill walls with 0.15 m thickness are located at
every bay of all the stories where the material is modeled with modulus of elasticity
3450 MPa, compressive strength 6.9 MPa, and shear strength 0.34 MPa. Infill walls
of all of the stories of the middle bay are strengthened using #3 mesh reinforcement
with 150 mm spacing in both directions and 100 mm thick concrete on each side in
the retrofitted case as shown in Figures 4 to 6.
FRAGILITY ANALYSES

Twenty near-fault ground motions with transverse and longitudinal components

are selected for the analyses and applied bi-directionally to the as-built and retrofitted
frames. These ground motions were extensively studied and carefully selected for a
previous study for the seismic evaluation of a science building located on the campus
of the University of California, Berkeley (UCS building) under the TestBed program
of PEER (details of the ground motions are present in (Lee and Mosalam, 2006)). A
scaling based on the first mode pseudo-acceleration is applied to the ground motions.
Six (0.25, 0.5, 0.75, 1.0, 1.25, and 1.5g) pseudo-acceleration levels are considered.
The maximum interstory drift ratio (MIDR) along the height is chosen as the
response variable. Lee and Mosalam (2003) have shown that the ground motion
intensity and profile are the dominant input variables affecting MIDR for a study
conducted for the UCS building mentioned above. Therefore, uncertainty in other
variables (e.g. mass, damping or strength) is not taken into consideration.
For each pseudo-acceleration level (PSa), MIDR for each of the 20 ground
motions is calculated. For some levels, the number of data is reduced from 20 because
of the numerical failures due to excessive deformations. Then, a lognormal statistical
distribution is fitted to these MIDR values and the lognormal parameters, the mean
() and the standard deviation () are calculated for each intensity level. Afterwards,
the probability of exceedance of a certain MIDR value is calculated for the intensity
levels. Three limiting MIDR values, namely 0.01, 0.02 and 0.03, are considered.
Obtained fragility relationships for the as-built and retrofitted cases are plotted in
Figure 9. It is observed that the proposed retrofit method is quite successful in
reducing the interstory drifts. Figure 10 shows the mean interstory drift profiles
obtained for the as-built and retrofitted frames for PSa levels of 1.0g, 1.25g and
1.50g. This figure demonstrates the effect of the proposed retrofit in transforming the
concentrated drifts of the as-built frame to uniform drifts along the height.
As mentioned above, both the URM infill walls and the strengthened infill walls
are modeled using diagonal elements. Therefore, lateral forces are transferred from
these elements to the columns. While it is expected that the rocking of the
strengthened infill walls reduces the magnitude of the transferred lateral forces, they
have a tendency to transfer more lateral forces than the as-built URM infill walls,
leading to a greater chance of shear failure of the columns in the retrofitted cases. In
order to investigate this phenomenon, the number of columns exceeding shear force
capacity (designated as shear yielding) is determined for the as-built and retrofitted

Probability of exceedance

cases. The results presented in Figure 11 show that there are shear yielding cases in
both the as-built and retrofitted frames. However, when the ratios of the shear drift
(displacement in the shear spring divided by column height) demand to the shear drift
corresponding to axial failure (Zhu et al., 2007) is investigated, it is observed that this
value is at most 0.18, with only four values greater than 0.1 in the retrofitted case,
whereas one of the columns seem to have axial failure with ten values greater than 0.1
in the as-built case.
1
0.9
0.8
0.7
0.6
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0

IDR = 0.01 As-built

IDR = 0.01 Retrofit
IDR = 0.02 As-built
IDR = 0.02 Retrofit
IDR = 0.03 As-built
IDR = 0.03 Retrofit

0.25

0.75
1
1.25
1.5
PSa (g)
Figure 9. Fragility relationships for the as-built and retrofitted frames.

0.5

9
PSa =1.0g

PSa =1.25g

PSa =1.50g
8

5
4

0
0.01 0.02 0.03
Interstory Drift Ratio

Retrofitted
As-built

0
0.025
0.05
Interstory Drift Ratio

Story #

Story #

Story #

5
4

0
0.02 0.04 0.06
Interstory Drift Ratio

Figure 10. Mean interstory drift profiles for the as-built and retrofitted frames.

# of shear yielding columns

9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0

Retrofitted Frame
As-built Frame

9 story PSa = 1.25g

# of shear yielding columns

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
Ground Motion #
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0

Retrofitted Frame
As-built Frame

9 story PSa = 1.50 g

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
Ground Motion #

Figure 11. Comparison of the number of shear yielding columns for the as-built
and retrofitted frames.
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

A retrofit method which consists of strengthening the URM infill walls with
mesh reinforcement and concrete and which takes advantage of these strengthened
walls as rocking spines is proposed. Through the nonlinear static and dynamic
analyses, it is demonstrated that the proposed retrofit method is effective in reducing
the interstory drifts and transforming the concentrated drifts due to soft story or shear
failure of columns to uniform drifts along the height.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

TUBITAK (Scientific and Technical Research Council of Turkey) is

acknowledged for the funding provided to the first author.

REFERENCES

American Society of Civil Engineers (2008). Seismic rehabilitation of existing

buildings. ASCE/SEI Standard 41-06, ASCE, Reston, VA.
Kadysiewski S., and Mosalam K.M. (2009). Modelling of unreinforced masonry
walls considering in-plane and out-of-plane interaction, 11th Canadian
Masonry Symposium, May 31- June 3, Toronto, Canada.
Lee, T.-H., and Mosalam K.M. (2003). Sensitivity of seismic demand of a reinforced
concrete shear-wall building. In Proceedings of the Ninth International
Conference on Applications of Statistics and Probability in Civil Engineering,
ICASP9, Der Kiureghian A, Madanat S, Pestana J (eds), San Francisco,
California, U.S.A., 69 July; 15111518.
Lee, T.-H., and Mosalam, K.M. (2006). Probabilistic Seismic Evaluation of
Reinforced Concrete Structural Components and Systems, Pacific
Earthquake Engineering Research Center Technical Report, 2006/04.
Mosalam, K.M., and Gnay, M.S. (2009). Seismic retrofit of non-ductile reinforced
concrete frames using infill walls as a rocking spine, Workshop on Advances
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Mazzoni, S., McKenna, F., Scott, M.H., and Fenves, G. (2004). Opensees Users
Manual, Available from: www.opensees.berkeley.edu.
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Zhu, L., Elwood, K.J., and Haukaas, T. (2007) Classifications and seismic safety
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