DESIGN PROBLEMS OF INFILLED FRAMES

During previous earthquakes, masonry infill walls have been seriously damaged. As it has been observed by many researchers, poor quality of the building materials and unlawfully construction methods have been the main causes of such damages. Furthermore, during the analysis and design of such buildings, they are usually treated as nonstructural elements and accordingly their effects on the total behavior of structure are ignored inthe design. In this paper, classification of infill walls has been made and the main design problems have been discussed. Soft stories, short columns, large displacements and drifts, design methods required to model the infill-frame interaction, frame-infill connection, and the effect of torsion, are among the issues discussed in this paper. Simultaneously, and to prevent the negative effects of infills, solutions to these problems have been suggested.