slender concrete walls framed with wide beams

[joanrizu]

I am trying to design a small residential 2 story building in high risk seismic zone, but arquitect doesn’t want wide columns, he wants columns of the same width of the partition walls. Is possible to model the building like a frame with some slender walls replacing columns, but with wide beams for medium spans? Is this only a name change to avoid Code restriction about frame member dimensions? How is the behavior of the joint beam (35 cm wide) with a very slender wall (12 cm wide)? What about the reinforcement development at transverse beams? I am using Etabs to model the building and it seems there is no problem with the design, but I am worried about the actual behavior of the structure.

Thank you

 

[AlohaBob]

The lateral forces would be resolved in the concrete shearwalls. For residential loading, reinforced concrete should provide sufficient point bearing capacity for beams. Otherwise, if a point load is still too high, maybe you could use a steel column embedded in the wall.

If you are curiuously reluctant to support a steel beam with a 14 inch flange on a 5 inch wide wall, I agree, something seems amiss in the house.