Study of a new type of replaceable coupling beam in reinforced concrete shear wall structures

It has been found from the past earthquakes that the reinforced concrete coupling beams in tall buildings easily suffer severe damage, which are very difficult to be repaired. To solve this problem, a new type of replaceable coupling beam with a combined damper installed in the middle was proposed in this study. The combined damper consists of an I-shaped steel beam with multiple low-yield-point steel webs paralleled to each other and multiple layers of viscoelastic material bonded between multiple steel plates. The design method of the new replaceable coupling beam was introduced first. Cyclic loading tests on the combined damper were conducted to examine its mechanical behavior. To verify the effectiveness of the new replaceable coupling beam in resisting wind and seismic excitations, two high-rise building structures, one with traditional coupling beams and the other with the proposed replaceable coupling beams, were designed, and the responses of two structures under the wind and the earthquake were compared with the aid of software Perform-3D. Compared with the structure with traditional coupling beams, both of the seismic performance and the wind resistance capability of the structure with the proposed replaceable coupling beams are improved significantly.