Influence of Infill Masonry Walls in the Seismic Response of Buildings: From Field Observations to Laboratory Research

The seismic performance of infill masonry walls is a topic of growing importance due to the significant number of collapses observed through the recent earthquakes. Nowadays is recognized by the scientific community the influence of these elements in the structural response of reinforced concrete structures subjected to seismic actions. The infills out-of-plane (OOP) behaviour depends on a series of variables and there is a lack of experimental data to understand and predict their expected seismic performance. There is a need of data to calibrate numerical models and to understand the effect of each variable such as type of masonry, boarder constrains, slenderness, previous in-plane damage and insufficient support width in the infills OOP capacity. The present chapter pretends to overview some considerations regarding the performance assessment of infills OOP performance such as based on experimental tests and numerical modelling results. Additionally, a brief literature and international codes recommendations review on this topic will be presented and discusses and will help to understand the importance of the infills seismic behaviour on the performance assessment of reinforced concrete structures.