Influence of window opening on cyclic behavior of precast infill wall with sliding joints

In engineering practice, creating window openings in partition infill walls is a common requirement for infilled frames. However, the intervention of infill walls may interrupt the desired cyclic behavior of the infilled frame, and worst yet, the inevitable window opening might further aggravate such negative interaction. To protect the openings from the detrimental multiple diagonal struts mechanism of the traditional infill wall with a window opening under lateral loadings, this research presents a novel infill wall system with a window opening for semi-rigid steel frames. Three half-scaled specimens are subjected to quasi-static cycle tests: a bare steel frame, a steel frame infilled with a traditional infill wall with a window opening, and a precast infill wall with a window opening and sliding joints in a steel frame. Experimental results show that the proposed infill system with a window opening can release adverse crack development or opening deformation of the window opening by mitigating the detrimental multiple diagonal struts effect in conventional infill walls with window openings under lateral loadings. In this way, the developed infilled frame exhibits similar cyclic behavior to the designed bare steel frame with higher energy dissipation capacity. Furthermore, parametric analysis results reveal that the friction factor of the sliding joints has a significant effect on enhancing the bearing capacity of the proposed infill system, while the change of opening sizes and locations of the window opening has negligible impact on the cyclic behavior of the developed infill system.