Earthquake response of reinforced concrete frames with infill and active external confinement: Tests and dataset

One option to retrofit reinforced concrete (RC) frames is the construction of infill walls. Infill increases lateral strength and stiffness but tends to reduce drift capacity relative to bare frames. Few studies have quantified the reductions in drift demand attributable to infills prior to failure. This report summarizes data from experiments designed to compare drift demands of frames with and without infill. Included data come from two experimental programs completed at Purdue University which focused on the in-plane dynamic response of reduced-scale, non-ductile RC frames to uniaxial simulated earthquake ground motions. 254 dynamic tests were conducted on bare frames, frames with masonry infill walls, and frames with timber infill walls. In 11 of 14 test series, active confinement was applied to columns using external post-tensioned reinforcement. The complete dataset is open-access online on Zenodo, DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.6954967.