## 1 Introduction  
Reinforced concrete (RC) structures with masonry infills are common around the globe, including in countries with medium/high seismic hazards [1, 2, 3]. The Mediterranean Sea countries are a distinct example of these countries, including Algeria. Even though the ability of infill walls to carry lateral loads during earthquakes are obviously seen in several post-earthquake investigations (e.g., see [4], among others) and by several numerical and experimental studies [5].  
During an earthquake, infill walls may take a large part of the seismic force in the initial stages, however, with the increase in seismic demand and with the consequent damage to the infill panels, the capacity to sustain the force is reduced suddenly and the global building behavior may change. Therefore, the influence of the walls on the local and global behavior of the structure and their contribution to the capacity and stiffness remains dependent on the characteristics of these walls and on the failure distribution.  
In the last years, several studies have been conducted to reduce the impact of an earthquake on RC structures at the building scale using base isolation [6, 7] or smart dissipating devices for example [8], or with local strategies at the infill panel level, such as seismic infill wall isolation [9, 10, 11, 12], however, this advanced technique is not available yet in the current practice.  
In Algeria, the use of masonry is limited; it is often used only as filling material in the construction of RC buildings. In analysis, masonry's influence on building behavior is commonly neglected. The seismic building code, RPA [13], recommends a global failure mechanism, obtained by designing these self-stable structures in such a way that the plastic hinges are formed in the beams rather than in the columns, to dissipate by plastic deformations, a maximum of seismic energy without collapsing. However, considering the design procedures and the available infill typologies, the questions generally asked relate to the influence of the infill masonry walls on the structure's building strength and energy dissipation capacity, its way of undergoing post-elastic deformations, its initial stiffness and the failure mechanisms.  
Nevertheless, unfortunately, in Algeria, there are practically no standards concerning the behavior of infill masonry walls. Masonry infill walls have a very complex behavior due to the materials' heterogeneity and the almost artisanal techniques associated with its production, making it a very variable material that is difficult to standardize.  
The present work aims to study the seismic behavior of RC structures, considering the influence of the presence of openings, and the position of these infill walls on the seismic behavior of RC frame structures. For this, considered a six-story frame with three bays of the same length was considered. This frame is part of a building supposed to be in a zone of high seismicity (zone III according to RPA 99/2003 version) [13; 14].  
The secondary objective is to study the variability of the presence of infill walls and their effect on the structural response, whereby 15 models were selected from the structure previously studied, considering the variation in the presence of building walls in each case. After designing the frame according to the RPA 99/2003 [13] version and BAEL 91 [14], non-linear static analyses (pushover) were carried out on the frame with different infill wall configurations. At the end of these post-elastic analyses, a discussion of the results is carried out, emphasizing the variation of the parameters, such as the base shear of the frame and the lateral displacements of floors.