in-plane behavior of confined masonry walls with and without opening

confined masonry buildings are used in rural and urban areas of iran. they performed almost satisfactoryduring past moderate earthquakes of iran. there is not a methodology in iranian seismic code (standard 2800-3rdedition) to estimate their capacities quantitatively. in line with removing this constraint, an attempt is made to studyin-plane behavior of two squared confined masonry walls with and without opening by using a numerical approach.these walls are considered based on iranian seismic code requirements. finite element 2d models of the walls aredeveloped and a pushover analysis is carried out. to model the non-linear behavior of the confined masonry walls, thefollowing criteria are used: (1) the rankine-hill yield criterion with low orthotropic factor to model the masonrypanel (2) the rankine yield criterion to model reinforced concrete bond-beams and tie-columns (3) the coulombfriction criterion with tension cutoff mode to model the interface zone between the masonry panel and reinforcedconcrete members. for this purpose, the unknown parameters are determined by testing of masonry and concretesamples and by finite element analysis. comparing the results show that the initial stiffness, the maximum lateralstrength and the ductility factor of walls with and without opening are different. also, the severe compressed zones ofthe masonry panels within the confining elements are found different from what are reported for the masonry panelsof infilled frames by other researchers. this study shows that a further investigation is needed for estimating capacityof confined masonry walls with and without opening analytically and experimentally. also where openings, withmedium size are existed, the confining elements should be added around them. these issues can be considered in thenext revisions of iranian seismic code.