LAUSR

Abstract In most of the Reinforced Concrete buildings in Greece, as well as in other earthquake prone countries, the current infill construction, for the exterior walls of buildings, consists in a cavity masonry wall, made of two thin walls. The two walls are not transversely connected. The seismic vulnerability of those enclosures (to in-plane and out-of-plane actions) is high, as many seismic events have shown. In the last decades, emphasis was given to the study of Innovative Infill Systems with improved seismic behaviour. The in-plane and out-of-plane behaviour of the (vulnerable) currently constructed masonry infills has not been systematically studied, experimentally and analytically. Within the present work, two full scale RC infilled frames were tested. One was subjected to in-plane cyclic displacements; the second specimen was subjected to repeated out-of-plane displacements, until severely damaged, and subsequently subjected to cyclic in-plane loading. Hysteresis loops for the entire loading history, the observed damage at several drift values and the overall behaviour of the infill are presented and discussed upon. The obtained results are compared to the results recorded during testing of innovative infill systems. It is shown that the performance of the currently constructed infill system is inferior in terms of both load and deformation capacity.