Hand-Calculated Procedure for Rigidity Computation of Shear Walls with Openings

Abstract

The behavior of a solid shear wall is well understood, and the rigidity of the wall can be accurately determined using a simple hand-calculated approach. However, the computation of the rigidity of a shear wall with openings is significantly more complex than that of a solid wall and, therefore, can only be accurately determined by using the computer-aided FEM. Although several conventional simplified hand-calculated procedures are available for practicing structural engineers, results from those procedures are highly approximate and may not be reliable. Therefore, a more accurate hand-calculated procedure, which considers the rotation at the tops of the piers and the effective length of the piers, is proposed to calculate the rigidity of shear walls with openings. A total of three different configurations of shear walls with openings are used as examples to assess the accuracy of the newly proposed hand-calculated method. The accuracy of the results derived from the newly proposed hand-calculated procedure has significantly been improved over the conventional hand-calculated procedures.