Ductile design of innovative steel and concrete hybrid coupled walls

An innovative hybrid coupled wall (HCW) system made of a single reinforced concrete (RC) wall coupled to two steel side columns by means of steel links is presented, its lateral load resisting mechanism illustrated, and a simple design procedure proposed. The design objective is to reduce or possibly avoid the damage in the RC wall while concentrating the seismic damage to the replaceable steel links intended to be the only dissipative components of the presented HCW system. In this way it is possible to obtain a seismic resistant system that can be easily repaired through the substitution of the yielded steel links. The proposed design procedure is applied to a case study considering various assumptions for the design parameters. The designed solutions are analysed through a nonlinear finite element model in order to evaluate the results of the design methodology and provide useful information on the ductility capacity under horizontal loads of the proposed innovative HCW system.