Seismic behavior of novel low‐damage precast infill walls with sliding joints for reinforced concrete frame

Abstract The detrimental infill‐frame interaction and vulnerable nature of the traditional solid infill walls might change the seismic behavior of the infilled reinforced concrete frames. To mitigate the adverse infill‐frame interaction and protect the fragile infill walls, in this paper, an innovative solution by partitioning the infill wall panels with low‐strength mortar sliding joints and uncoupling the infill from the boundary frame by flexible materials is presented for the reinforced concrete frames. Three 1/2 scale specimens designed in this context were examined experimentally and numerically, and a simplified model is developed for the proposed infill system. Test results show that the presented low‐damage infill system could effectively mitigate the adverse infill‐frame interaction and considerably prevent corner crushing or damage to the infill wall panels so that the reinforced concrete frame with the proposed infill system behaves similarly to the bare frame. Thanks to the working mechanism of the infill system, the proposed wall panels have a relatively high energy conversion efficiency from inter‐story displacement to the energy dissipation capacity of the infilled frame. Moreover, the developed simplified infill model could well capture the hysteretic behaviors of the proposed low‐damage infill system and improve the calculation efficiency. Parametric analysis results indicate that the friction factor of the sliding joints plays a significant role in enhancing the seismic behavior of the novel low‐damage infilled system.