Seismosoft | Earthquake Engineering Solutions

Dear Seismosoft support,

Could you suggest me how you calculate the Strut Area 1 of small infill panels (59100mm2), large infill panels (49400mm2), door infill panels (31200mm2) and complete infill panels (50100mm2) in Ch4-infill-04 of verification report? And why you define the Strut Area 2 is 20% for all panels?

I have calculated the strut area 1 by using panel thickness 150mm x equivalent width of the strut bw (bw=1/3dw), and the calculated strut area 1 is equal to 254950mm2 and 159138mm2 for long-bay and short-bay infill panels when do not consider the opening of infill panels.

How did you consider the opening of infill panels in the model?

Thank you very much.

Best regards,
Summer

Summer, hi.

The model you refer to was not developed by Seismosoft itself, but rather by the researchers that authored the publication cited in the Chapter in question:

- Smyrou E., Blandon C., Antoniou S., Pinho R., Crisafulli F. (2011) “Implementation and verification of a masonry panel model for nonlinear dynamic analysis of infilled RC frames,” Bulletin of Earthquake Engineering, Vol. 9, No. 5, pp. 1519–1534.


Hence, as a first step, I would suggest you to read such publication, and then, in case doubts remain, contact the main author.

In any case, I can certainly confirm that infill panel openings are typically taken into account in a very empirical/arbitrary fashion (e.g. by reducing the strut area by a certain percentage), either based on suggestions found in the literature or, as in this case, to make the numerical results match their experimental counterparts.

Best,

Rui