Hysteretic Behavior Of Connections Of Steel Coupling Beams Linking Concrete Shear Walls With Steel Boundary Element In Hybrid Coupled Walls System

In the design of shear wall structures, the researchers abroad have already replaced the coupling beam of reinforced concrete for using the coupling beam of steel, a new form of mixed structure named hybrid coupled walls (HCWs) , and carried out plenty of researches. In the past research, they focused on the behaviors of steel coupling beam which embeded into reinforced concrete directly though a certain of depth and on the structural overall behavior with this kind of connection. In this paper, a new kind connection is proposed, which a steel boundary element is added to walls, and steel beam is welded on the steel boundary element directly to form rigid connections. The design of steel beam is based on shearing-yielding in stead of flexure-yielding. Main contents in this paper are as follows: (1) According to the foreign research conclusions and suggestions, BASE specimen is designed in order to study this kind of connection under reversed cyclic loading. Through ANSYS program analysis, this kind of connection has sufficient ductility and the ability of absorbing significant amounts of energy. So hybrid coupled walls with this kind of connection are suitable of high hazard levels seismic areas perfectly. (2) The behavior of this connections are analyzed through varying the shear wall material strength, shear wall thickness, the ratio of steel column height and width to their thickness, the ratio of steel coupling beam height andwidth to their thickness and the ratio of steel coupling beam span to height etc. At the same time, use the level of ductility and the ratio of bearing capacity V / V_n torepresent the ductility and the bearing capacity of these connections. As a result, following conclusions can be suggested: (1) The strength of steel and the ratio of steel column height and width to their thickness have great influence on their ductility, but little influence on their strength; (2) The ratio of steel coupling beam height and width to their thickness have great influence on their bearing capacity V / V_n, but little influence on their ductility; (3) The shear wall material strength, wall thickness, the ratio of steel coupling beam flange width to thickness, the ratio of steel column flange width to thickness and the ratio of steel coupling beam span to height have little influence for this kind of connection under cyclic load.