Correlation analysis of a reinforced-concrete building under tsunami load pattern and effect of masonry infill walls on tsunami load resistance

The 26 December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami caused damage to many buildings and killed a lot of people in several Indian Ocean countries, including Thailand. Several reinforced-concrete (RC) buildings in Southern Thailand that were gravity-load-designed buildings suffered damage due to the tsunami. To understand the behaviour of RC buildings under tsunami loads, the one-story building, which was the former office of the Thai Meteorological Department located in Phang-Nga province, was tested under tsunami load patterns. In this research, the RC building is modelled for three-dimensional non-linear static pushover analysis. In the building model, masonry infill walls are idealised as diagonal struts by using uniaxial non-linear springs, and plastic hinges are modelled by non-linear fibre elements. The results of the building model agree well with test results. The effect of masonry infill walls is investigated by considering various wall arrangement patterns. The building with masonry infill walls can resist the lateral load two times higher than the resistance of the building without masonry infill wall. The masonry infill walls with the appropriate arrangement can significantly improve the load-resisting capacity of the building under tsunami loads.