The beam behavior is controlled by bending or by shear and bending together. It is recommended that the coupling beam zone is modeled with a beam accompanied by a special connection element. The connection element is a rigid link element placed between the beam and the shear wall and it provides both shear and bending transfer between the beam and the shear wall. In order to enforce this feature, “Include Rigid Link at Beam-to-Wall Locations” option in the Criteria dialog must be selected. If this option is selected, the program internally provides a rigid link at the location where a coupling beam frames into a shear wall. This kind of modeling provides a better load transfer between the beam and the wall. It should be noted that the rigid link is only functionally for the load transfer between the wall and the beam (otherwise, it does not alter stiffness of the wall or the beam). This is demonstrated in the Figure below.

When the “Include Rigid Link at Beam-to-Wall Locations” option is selected, the program searches for all locations where a lateral beam is framing into a lateral shear wall. The following rules are followed:

• The rigid links are only applied if the coupling beam is fixed in major axis bending
• The rigid link is not applied if there is already a column at the edge of the wall panel (it is assumed that the column takes on the role of the rigid link and hence, it is not necessary to add an additional rigid link)