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WHAT IS MEAN BY COUPLING BEAM ?

Home / Structural analysis / What is mean by Coupling Beam ?

01
Coupling BEAM:Definition Search
Coupling beam is an important member of the lateral force resisting system in a structure.
JAN 2017 Consequently It couples or combines the two independent systems like shear walls. Recent Posts
W H Y W E PROV IDE COUPLING B E A M ?
3 COMMENTS What is mean by secondary compress
For example, Lets assume there are two buckets, one is completely filled with water whereas failure of the beam ?
other is half filled. Now we have to level up the amount of water in both of the buckets. oh..! Seems quit easy
What is mean by Coupling Beam ?
but not.. For doing this there is a condition, it should be done without lifting up the bucket and a small flexible
tube is given to us to connect the bucket. What will we do? We will just connect both of the buckets and due What are the technical limitations for
to the siphon action we would be able to transfer water from a filled bucket to the half filled bucket. building skyscrapers today (2016) and
high can we go with todays technolog
Similarly to above effect when we have two independent shear walls or two concentric braced frames or
anything which is helping us to resist the lateral loads and we want to connect them to reduce the overturning What is mean by rotation and bending
effect or improve the overall stiffness of the system then we will use a coupling beam to connect both the moment of the beam ?
systems as a result distributing forces in between. Which building type will have higher
Effect of coupling BEAM resistance to earthquake, High rise
building or Low rise building ?

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As shown in above image,in first figure there is no shear beam is provided. Whereas in second figure shear
beam is connecting two individual piers of shear core. Now Imagine the deformation of shear wall, when the
lateral load is applied from left to right . In first case Both piers will move independently without any harmony
resulting in further complicated behavior. Therefore to make them as a solid core the coupling beam is used to
transfer force from one pier to another.
Hence, while deforming the extreme ends of wall the piers experiences tension and compression. If we
coupling/combining the system results in transfer of tension and compression forces through the coupling
beam as a shear force for which beam is designed. The stiffness of coupling beam plays an important role in
adding the stiffness to the system.

But can we make the coupling beam very stiff ? Well no , because coupling plays one more important role
during earthquakes. It acts as a fuse or a way of energy dissipation. By undergoing cyclic deformations as the
wall rock back and forth and resisting the seismic force. When we plot the loops of moment experienced by
beam versus rotation called the cyclic curve, it looks something like this :

There are two types of coupling beam :

1. Conventionally reinforced beam

This is just an regular type of beam. It consists a horizontal top and the bottom reinforcement and shear ties.
This is used when the aspect ration of the beam is large i.e. the beam is pretty long compared to its depth. The
long beam is a flexible, which means it will form moment hinges at ends and the failure will be ductile failure.
Thus the shear reinforcement is basically under control. Hence, we are able to provide a feasible and
constructible cross section of beam.

2. Diagonally reinforced beam

When the beams aspect ratio is small, i.e. the depth of beam is very similar to length. Then the failure of beam
is governed by shear and the beam will see a brittle failure. To resist the brittle failure diagonal bars are provided
in coupling beam. This bars help in resisting shear and will also reduce the amount of shear reinforcement
required.

As indicated in first image, we assume that core wall will experience large amount of the moment forces at the
base of system, but sometimes the core is so big that it was unable yield and thus system becomes inefficient.
At that time we can only rely on the coupling beams to dissipate all of this earthquake energy. Hence in other
way they act as the safety factor to the building.

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3 Comments

Jeeny

Thank you sir/madam,

Explained in quit simple manner

January 1, 2017 at 12:58 pm Reply

Pratap Raj

Cant we make all the beam with higher aspect ratios ?

As you said the conventionally reinforced beam are more feasible then we should reduce the depth of beam to
make it higher aspect ratio

January 2, 2017 at 2:29 pm Reply

Unsolved-Engineering

Its not possible to provide the lower depth beam in all cases. Depth of the beam is provided to resist the
bending forces and other forces thus if we provide the depth lesser than the required depth which may be
flexible but it wont be able to resist the forces and will eventually fail.

But there is also another way in between flexible beam and feasible beam. We provide the beams in more
numbers i.e. instead of one beam with large depth we provide three beams with lower depth. But
remember this will make the structure uneconomical.

January 2, 2017 at 3:16 pm Reply

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