Out of plane behavior of walls, using rigid block concepts

Out of plane behaviors of walls and infills are investigated in this paper, using rigid block concepts. Walls and infills are sometimes separated from top beams because of in plane movement of the walls and crumbling mortar layers under the top beams. Therefore, sufficient strength should be supplied to hold them against out of plane forces. Such walls are studied here under some real and scaled earthquakes, regarding their out of plane behavior. Influences of some reinforcements, connecting the walls to frames or perpendicular walls, are also studied. It is shown that unreinforced walls of regular sizes (3 m high and 4.5 m long) are normally unstable in the earthquakes. However, performing some reinforced bars that connect them to adjacent elements- frames or perpendicular walls - stabilizes them. Eventually, it is concluded that supplying 3 reinforced bars at 1/4, 2/4 and 3/4 of the panel's height stabilizes the walls in the assumed earthquakes. In this regard, for 20 cm and 35 cm thick walls ${\Phi}$18mm and ${\Phi}$20mm bars are to be used, respectively. For walls with other configurations, the forces and required areas of the reinforcements can be determined by the developed method of this paper.