slender concrete walls 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.

 

[Yameen]

What I can suggest u is to make a hoop at the junction of beam and column so that u can control the shear coming on to column through beam, however it is practically acceptable to have slender columns with wide beamns, as far as the transverse reinforcement of the beam is concern, u can provide additional shear reinforcement but I can't comment how the cost will increase.