Cyclic behaviour of deep reinforced concrete coupling beams

Six half-scale models of reinforced concrete coupling beams with span/depth ratios ≤ 2·0 were tested under reversed cyclic load by a newly developed test method that can accurately simulate the boundary conditions of coupling beams in coupled shear wall structures. Five of them were conventionally reinforced and one was diagonally reinforced. Span/depth ratio and reinforcement layout were the main structural variables studied. Test results revealed that the deep conventionally reinforced coupling beams behaved quite differently from the ordinary beams in frame structures. Generally, shear failure was more likely to occur. Moreover, the additional longitudinal reinforcement bars (those placed near the centroidal axis) could contribute significantly to bending strength and therefore lead to an increase in shear demand. Nevertheless, the measured drift ratios of the conventionally reinforced coupling beams still reached 3·6–5·7%, which are not small for deep coupling beams. On the other hand, it was found that the provision of diagonal reinforcement radically changed the load resisting mechanism and significantly improved the energy dissipation capacity of the coupling beam. However, it had not improved the deformability of the coupling beam.