Shearwall Question

[strguy11]

I have a reinforced masonry building with a rigid diaphragm on the 2nd floor. If the building is a 100' x 50' box do I have to use the entire 100' length as a shearwall?

It seems to me that the rigid analysis would be alot easier if you only used say like 30' of each wall as a shearwall, then the openings, and other torsional eccentric moments would not come into play, since i could keep the center of mass and center of rigidity the same.

Any thoughts?

 

[dik]

You could consider the wall broken into 20' or 30' panels (where you have control joints)... no matter how you cut it, a 100' wall is pretty rigid... If you want to use the full 100', then you have to really work to transfer the shear across the control joints <G>.

Dik

 

[whyun]

When all the math is done, the shear stresses will be very small.

If the layout of the openings are similar on the two walls, each will roughly take half and half of the total lateral force.

It may be easier to just overestimate the distribution (say 70%, or even 80%) then accurately distribute that conservative load to the wall piers for the stress check.