Discussion on “Seismic capacity of masonry infilled RC frame strengthening with expanded metal ferrocement” by A. Leeanansaksiri, P. Panyakapo, A. Ruangrassamee [Eng. Struct. 159 (2018) 110-127]

A discussion on the paper by Leeanansaksiri et al. (2018) is presented. In the paper, strengthening of the masonry infill walls using ferrocement reinforced with standard expanded steel plates (EMS) was investigated experimentally. A bare frame without infill wall, a frame with a plain (unstrengthened) infill wall and a frame with a strengthened infill wall were tested under reversed cyclic lateral loading. The type of EMS to be used for strengthening was decided based on compressive strength tests on plain (unstrengthened) and strengthened masonry prisms and monotonic diagonal loading tests on wall panels. The results of the prism and panel tests were also used to determine the parameters of the analytical hysteric models, which closely estimated the experimental results of the frame tests. While the paper reached important conclusions related to the proposed strengthening technique, the authors of this discussion felt obliged to present their significant findings on the issues, raised in the paper for further research to increase the efficiency of the proposed technique. Furthermore, this discussion summarizes the findings of the authors on the strategies to investigate the efficiency of an infill wall strengthening technique.