Research Projects

Infill walls in reinforced concrete framed buildings are often constructed up to a limited height of columns to provide more lighting and ventilation. These partial infill walls have an important role in the lateral load-transfer mechanism in building frames. The performance of framed buildings in past earthquakes clearly illustrates that the columns of partially infilled frames fail due to short-column and captive-column effects. To understand the effect of infill materials, experiments on full-scale models of partially infilled RC frames using different types of bricks (light/high-density bricks) have already been carried out at IIT Bhubaneswar. Further many parametric studies need to carry out to undetderstand the interaction between the frame and the infill and to develop simplified numerical model for practicing engineers. The work has to take into consideration the macro and micro-modeling techniques of finite element methods to replicate the behavior of infill panels. Also, the effect of ductile detailing in reducing the short column effect is to be studied. Moreover, the restoration of mild and moderately damaged structure which has not undergone complete collapse after an earthquake is also to be taken care of.