Diagonal reinforced coupling beam of coupled shear walls can provide sufficient strength and stiffness to resist lateral force. However, the reinforcement details for coupling beams required by ACI 318 (2011) are difficult to construct because of the reinforcement congestion and confined interior area. This study presents experimental results about the seismic performance of coupling beams having bundled diagonal reinforcement to improve the workability. Experiments were conducted using half scaled precast coupling beams having an aspect ratio of 2.0. It was observed that the bundled diagonal reinforced coupling beams can develop seismic performance similar to the coupling beams with requirement details specified in ACI 318 (2011).

The hysteretic behavior of diagonal reinforced coupling beams is excellent during earthquakes. However, construction of the diagonal reinforced coupling beams is difficult due to complex reinforcement details required by current code procedures (ACI 318-11). Due to the detail requirement, reinforcement congestion and interference among transverse reinforcement always occur during construction field. When the aspect ratio of the beam is large, the interference of reinforcement becomes more serious. The objective of this paper is to simplify the reinforcement details of slender coupling beams by reducing transverse reinforcement around the beam perimeter. For this purpose, high- performance fiber reinforced cementitious composites are used for making coupling beams. Experiments were conducted using three specimens having aspect ratio 3.5. Test results showed that HPFRCC coupling beams with half the transverse reinforcement required by ACI 318-11 provided identical seismic capacities to the corresponding coupling beams having requirement satisfying the requirement specified in ACI 318-11.