Shear walls are commonly used in tall concrete buildings to resist lateral loads. Due to the presence of regular door or window openings, a shear wall is often divided into smaller wall units coupled together by coupling beams. In any case, the earthquake resistance of a coupled shear wall structure is highly dependent on the nonlinear behaviour, especially the strength and ductility, of the coupling beams. Many existing building structures without provisions for resisting earthquake loads might no longer be considered to be up to the new standard due to increased-load specifications in the seismic code. A large number of RC coupling beams might require rehabilitation or retrofitting to...