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SEISMIC PERFORMANCE OF PORTUGUESE MASONRY INFILL WALLS: FROM TRADITIONAL SYSTEMS TO NEW SOLUTIONS

The use of masonry infill walls in RC structures is a common solution in Portugal for more than 50 years. These walls are used to build the envelope of the buildings and as interior partitions. Since these walls are built only after the hardening of the RC elements, they are assumed as non-structural elements, and not considered in the structural design. However, when buildings are subjected to seismic action, these walls assume a structural behavior. This leads in many cases to the existence of an unsatisfactory behavior of infill walls, resulting in damage of the walls, which put human lives in danger and cause extensive economic losses. This seismic vulnerability of masonry infill walls is well recognized by the scientific community and has been observed in the recent earthquakes in southern Europe. In the case of a seismic event of high intensity in Portugal, it is expected that similar problems will occur in the Portuguese masonry infill walls, given the similarity of the construction typologies, in southern Europe. It is therefore important to study the masonry infill walls used in Portugal over the years, to fully understand their seismic behavior, and thus be able to propose and study new masonry infill systems for new construction. Thus, in this paper is made a characterization of Portuguese masonry infill walls in terms of evolution over the years. After being presented the problems that arise from the seismic vulnerability of these walls. In an attempt to solve some of these problems is presented in this paper a new system of masonry infill walls, to be used in new construction, with the objective of present a better seismic behavior. Experimental validation of the system is performed, using the in-plane and out-of-plane tests performed at the University of Minho. At the end of the paper, a comparison is made between the new system and the traditional cavity walls, to assess the improvement of the seismic behavior in relation to the traditional solutions.