Vibration-Based Tests and Results for the Evaluation of Infill Masonry Walls Influence on the Dynamic Behaviour of Buildings: A Review

Tests on infill masonry walls have been widely performed by many researchers and for a long time with the main purpose of characterising the infill performance under earthquake-type excitations. However, most of these works deal with laboratory tests on purpose-built specimens. More recently, vibration-based tests have been also adopted to investigate the influence of the non-structural elements on the dynamic behaviour of buildings, with the advantage that this kind of tests can be performed both on laboratory specimens and on in-situ buildings. However, differently from classical infill tests (i.e., monotonic or cyclic lateral load tests, out of plane tests, etc.), a limited number of works is available in the literature discussing the outcomes and possible procedures for testing infilled structures with vibration-based methods aimed to investigate the role of the non-structural components. This paper presents a literature review of research works dealing with vibration-based tests performed on RC frame structures with the main target of discussing the influence of non-structural components on the dynamics of buildings. Tests on infilled buildings performed during the construction, in operating conditions and after the damage occurred due to earthquake shakings, are discussed. Furthermore, a comprehensive review about papers discussing vibration-based tests performed on infill masonry walls is presented and in-depth investigated with the aim of finding possible correlations between the dynamic test outcomes and the infill geometric and mechanical properties. From this study it comes out the need of further experimental data on both undamaged and damaged infills in order to get more reliable correlations.