Impact of Shelling on RC Frames with and without Infill Walls

Abstract

The traditional building practices used for the construction of residential buildings in Kuwait proved to be extremely effective in resisting fire and enduring severe structural damage from shelling during the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. This paper describes and illustrates how infill walls acted as wall-bearing elements to keep a building standing, even after the loss of supporting members. Two reinforced concrete (RC) frame structures, both of which were subjected to direct shelling and lost main supporting elements, are presented. The first frame does not have infill walls, while the second has them. The difference in behavior between the two cases shows the effectiveness of infill walls in preventing progressive collapse under such abnormal loading. A finite-element technique using the modified interface friction element, which represents the interface between the frame and the infill, is presented herein to explain the behavior of frames with infill walls before and after shelling. The finite-element method gave a good correlation with the actual behavior of the cases investigated.