Cracked coupling slabs in shear wall buildings

An economic form of construction for high-rise apartment buildings consists of spatial assemblies of shear walls and floor slabs, in which the coupling of the cross-walls by the floor slabs produces an efficient structural system. In analyzing such structures for lateral loading, it is necessary to determine the effective coupling stiffness and strength of the coupling slab. In view of these findings, a related numerical study was made of the influence of a pseudocrack on the coupling slab behavior. The aim was to investigate theoretically how a given crack could affect the two important design criteria of effective slab stiffness and principal slab bending moments, and, in so doing, to gain insight into the effect of a finite crack on slab behavior.