Quick Reparation of Infills in RC Frames After Seismic Damages – Experimental Tests on Shaking Table

Within SERA Horizon 2020 INMASPOL project, the paper reports the first results from seismic tests on shake table for a real scale reinforced concrete (RC) frame building with modified orthoblock brick wall infills. The building received innovative protection using polyurethane resin (PU) flexible joints (PUFJ) at the frame-infill interface together with the use of PUs for bonding glass fiber grids to the weak masonry substrate, to form Fiber Reinforced PU (FRPU) as emergency repair. The tests validated the advanced in-plane and out-of-plane infill performance under suitably designed seismic excitations. The PUFJ protection enabled the quick repair of the infill even after very high inter-storey drifts of the structure. In addition, the applied glass FRPU repair system efficiently protected the damaged orthoblock infills against collapse under out-of-plane excitation while they restored large part of their in-plane stiffness as well. In this paper, the performances of the FRPU applications under simulated seismic excitations are reported.