ABSTRACT
Many seismic events, heavy damage and failures of Unreinforced Masonry (URM) walls proved to be both a considerable economical loss and a serious hazard for human safety. URM infill walls affect both the strength and the stiffness of Reinforced Concrete (RC) frame structures undergoing lateral loads. A few macro-models that include out-of-plane actions were proposed, but limited studies have shown their application to realistic RC frame structures. The calibrated M&G model has been applied to the infill walls in RC planar frames representative of low-rise buildings. Nonlinear static pushover analyses are performed on the frames with the simultaneous application of static forces on the walls elements in the out-of-plane direction. The panel is modelled by using two elastic beams with an out-of-plane plastic hinge in the contact point. When the central node excesses the pre-defined in-plane/out-of-plane displacement domain, the panel is removed without interrupting the analysis.
