Experimental Study on Embedded Steel Plate Composite Coupling Beams

Abstract

A research study has been conducted on a newly proposed design of embedded steel plate composite coupling beams with shear studs in order to improve the performance of reinforced concrete (RC) coupling beams under severe wind or earthquake loading. The experimental results on three coupling beams tested under reversed cyclic loading are discussed in this paper. One of the coupling beams was conventionally reinforced, while each of the other two contained a vertically embedded steel plate along the whole span either with or without shear studs. It was found that embedded steel plates could improve the strength and the stiffness of coupling beams, while shear studs are required to enhance the plate/RC interaction in order to achieve good inelastic performance under large imposed shear deformations. Equations for calculating the required shear connection strength in the beam span to ensure the plate/RC composite action and for estimating the available plate/RC interface slips to mobilize shear studs have been proposed.