The efficacy of infill walls as equivalent compressive struts in Turkish seismic codes

Advancements in engineering and architectural design have significantly impacted the assessment of seismic codes, with technology playing a crucial role in this area. Turkiye has had its own seismic code since 1940, and it has undergone 10 revisions over the years. The most recent version, the Turkiye Building Earthquake Code TBEC2018, introduces numerous improvements and advancements in earthquake calculating methodologies. Notably, the 2018 code introduces a new requirement where the relative floor displacement is directly related to the position of infill walls, highlighting the significance of infill walls in mitigating earthquake forces. In this study the 3D model of a three-story reinforced concrete school building was generated using SAP2000 software to represent the infill walls as the bare frame models. The study involved designing infill walls as compression struts and analyzing their behavior under lateral earthquake loads using linear analysis methods. As infill walls were considered to braced modelled in the analysis, the stiffness of the structure increased and the first natural vibration period decreased significantly. The study also compared the structural parameters for the last two building codes (TSC 2007 and TBEC 2018) to determine the sensitivity of infilled walls. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2025.