Slide 4 of 67
Notes:
- It is important that shear walls align vertically
- Shear walls are most efficient when they align vertically and are supported on foundation walls or footings.
- When shear walls do not align, other parts of the building will need additional strengthening.
- Example: Consider an interior wall supported by a subfloor over a crawl space with no continuous footing beneath the wall. To be used as shear wall, the subfloor and its connections will have to be strengthened near the wall.
- For new construction:
- thicker plywood or
- extra nailing and connections can be added.
- Retrofit work: Existing floor construction is not easily changed.
- most retrofit work uses walls with continuous footings underneath them as shear walls.
- Discussion of figure
- Alignment is important. Load path goes straight down
- On left side, note the exterior shear wall
- This is simplest and best.
- Continuous load path from top to bottom
- It is prescriptive method for exterior cripple wall
- Now note the interior shear wall
- Note difference between interior shear wall and interior partition
- The interior partition has a break in the load path and therefore does not work as a shear wall
- The interior sheath wall also has a break at the floor. It will only work if the floor supports the shear wall (as shown in the center of figure)
