Design of masonry infill walls with sliding joints for earthquake structural damage control

Masonry-infilled RC frames can sustain significant damage in the event of strong ground shak-ing. The introduction of sliding joints in masonry infills can reduce the infill-frame interaction, ensure the in-fill out-of-plane stability, and minimize the infill damage under both in- and out-of-plane loading as shown by previous experimental and analytical studies. This paper summarizes previous studies and provides recom-mendations for the design and detailing of such structures. The proposed simplified design procedure can quantify the shear action on the frame columns due to the infill interaction which is compared to the case of traditional continuous infills.