Experimental study on seismic behavior of reinforced concrete core walls with coupling beams of different stiffness

In order to further study the seismic behavior of reinforced concrete core wall and factors influence, two reinforced concrete core wall models with large height-width ratio are built and tested under the combined action of constant axial load and reversed cyclic lateral load. Failure mode, hysteretic behavior, load-carrying capacity, ductility, energy dissipation ability, shear lag effect of the stiffness of coupling beam on each core wall was investigated. This result indicate that the final overall bending damage occurres at the bottom of each model and that the stiffness of coupling beam have important effects on the seismic behavior of reinforced concrete core wall. With the span-depth ratio of coupling beam dropping from 1.7 to 0.9, the stiffness and load-carrying capacity of the specimen has risen markedly, but the ductility performance drops significantly.