Sliding joint masonry infill with deformable contact material: interaction with the RC frame and design guidelines

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The seismic vulnerability of traditionally constructed masonry infilled frames has been repeatedly highlighted in post-event surveys, as well as by experimental and numerical studies. Infills with sliding joints can improve the seismic response of these structures. The paper describes some design equation derived from a parametric numerical analysis focusing on the interaction between the RC frame and the infill with sliding joints. A previously proposed analytical model, able to predict the lateral strength contribution and the column shear overload due to the infill frame interaction, is here extended to account for the role of a column-to-infill contact material characterized by and elastic response instead of an elastic-plastic one. A well-established finite element modelling approach through detailed Finite Element Modeling (FEM) is adopted and validated with the data from an experimental campaign focusing on ductile masonry infills with sliding joints. The influence of different infill-frame contact material stiffnesses is analysed together with other design parameters, such as the bay length, the masonry properties, the layout of sliding and contact joints.