Assessment of Structural Performance of Steel Coupling Beams with Corrugated Webs

Nowadays steel coupling beams are considered as efficient alternatives to reinforced concrete coupling beams, which can improve the ductility and seismic performance of the coupled shear wall systems. In this paper, the application of corrugated webs as an alternative to flat webs with stiffeners as a proposition for enhancing structural performance of such beams is investigated through detailed numerical simulations. Several models are developed based on some key geometricalparameters, viz. web-plate shape, web thickness, number of corrugations, and corrugation angle, and the structuralperformance of these models is evaluated via nonlinear pushover and cyclic analyses. It is shown that application of corrugated web makes it possible to achieve larger rotation capacity compared to that of commonly-used steel coupling beams. Moreover, the results of this study demonstrate that corrugated-web steel coupling beams possess appropriate energy absorption characteristics and are capable of dissipating the input energy in a quite desirable and efficient manner

Keywords:

Steel coupling beams , Corrugated web , Numerical simulation , Rotation capacity , Energy absorption characteristics