Continue to Site

Eng-Tips is the largest engineering community on the Internet

Intelligent Work Forums for Engineering Professionals

Congratulations waross on being selected by the Eng-Tips community for having the most helpful posts in the forums last week. Way to Go!

Special Masonry Shear Walls - Coupled shear wall design

Thread starter Zman42
Start date Jan 23, 2015

Status: Not open for further replies.

Jan 23, 2015

Zman42

Structural

I am designing a special masonry shear wall with an opening as a coupled shear wall. This results in an additional axial tension/compression force from seismic in the wall piers on either side of the opening. When calculating Fvm per equation 2-29 of ACI 530-11, am I correct to assume that the .25(Pn/An) term can be negative if the tension/compressive force exceeds the gravity loads on the wall?