Numerical assessment of the load transfer in steel coupling beam-reinforced concrete shear wall connection

Abstract

The present work presents an accurate finite element model for conducting a nonlinear analysis of hybrid coupled shear wall structures. The FE model built in the commercial code Abaqus describes the response of in-plane reinforced concrete (RC) shear walls connected with steel coupling beams. The material nonlinearities of concrete, reinforcement and beam steel were considered. An experimental test on simple coupling beam specimens was chosen to investigate limitations of the previous researches on steel coupling beams, particularly with regard to load transfer to structural walls. It is found that the FE model predicts correctly the experimental results. Indeed, the load–displacement behaviour of the overall structure and the corresponding failure modes are correctly described. In the second step, a parametric study was conducted to examine the influence of the embedment length, steel beam profile and concrete strength on the behaviour of the connection. It is observed that increasing these parameters increases the strength in all cases, whereas the displacement stabilizes when the embedment length is greater than half the wall width and concrete strength exceeds 30 MPa. Moreover, the distributions of the compressive stresses at the steel profile-concrete contact surfaces in different cases show an average estimation of the length in the compression zone above and below the embedded steel section.