Perforated Wood Shear Walls

[Peter_]

Good afternoon,

I was reading through the SDPWS requirements for perforated shear walls and came across limitation 6 which states that such walls "shall have uniform top-of-wall and bottom-of-wall elevations"(4.3.5.3).

It's my first time designing a perforated SW and my top plate does slope (~8 deg. slope), which I interpret as failing to meet this requirement. Does anyone have additional insight on this requirement or recommend additional readings that can help me understand how this requirement came to be (my guess is lack of testing?)?

Thanks in advance!

 

[JoshPlumSE]

There is some engineering judgement involved. You could probably still use perforated for the basics of your design if the slope were very slight.

However, it might be better to use the FTAO (force transfer around openings) procedure instead.

 

[jayrod12]

To me, if you designed it as if it were a straight wall at the maximum height it would be conservative? I feel that limitation is there to avoid the situation where you use the mean height (or in extreme cases the low height) of the roof in the calculations. What about just using a segmented wall approach, i.e. only looking at the walls on either side of the openings?