COUPLING BEAMS FOR HIGH RISE STRUCTURES

Abstract

Coupled shear has been in extensive use due to their outstanding energy dissipation capacity and how efficiently they provide lateral stiffness to the building structure. The Coupling beams enhance the lateral resistance of the structure by providing coupling action between two connected shear walls. Moreover, well-designed coupling beams provided at floor levels undergo inelastic deformation dissipating large amount of seismic energy than non-coupled shear walls. In conventional structures the coupling beams failed through brittle failure thus posing damage repair time consuming and expensive. To get a ductile behavior, diagonal reinforcement has been supplemented with conventional type of reinforcement. But providing diagonal reinforcement in practice leads to congestion problem and pouring concrete also become little difficult. To overcome these issues, this study replaces the RC coupling beam with alternative three configuration of coupling beam. Results of conventional RC coupling beam have been provided in this report. Inter-storey drift ratio, hinge formation pattern and ductility demand of the structure supported with the failure pattern, degree of coupling, energy dissipation and usage ratio of coupling beams along the height are considered as study parameters of this study. Future results will give the comparison report of RC coupling beams of conventional and steel coupling beams with other alternative coupling beam configurations considered in this study.