The Effect of Spandrel Beam's Specification on Response Modification Factor of Concrete Coupled Shear Walls

Response modification factor (R factor) is one of the seismic design parameters to be considered in evaluating the performance of buildings during strong motions. This paper has tried to evaluate the response modification factor of concrete coupled shear wall structures with various length/depth ratios of spandrel beams. The effect of diagonal reinforcement of spandrel beam was also evaluated on the R factor. The R factor directly depends on overstrength factor and ductility reduction factor. For this purpose, three conventional structures with 5, 10 and 15 story buildings (having various spandrel beam's length/depth ratio with and without diagonal reinforcement) were selected and the nonlinear static analyses were conducted to evaluate their overstrength and ductility reduction factors. Also for a 5-story structure, nonlinear dynamic analysis (time history) was carried out in order to compare the results with nonlinear static analysis. It was concluded that the R factors using nonlinear time history analysis and nonlinear static analysis are almost the same. The results also indicate that by increasing the height of the structure, the overstrength reduction factor decreases; while the ductility reduction factor increases. Also, the response modification factor decreases with increasing length/depth ratio of spandrel beams. The coupled shear walls with diagonal reinforcement in spandrel beams have a greater R factor.