WebStructural

Wall Designer

Reinforced CMU and concrete bearing walls: axial load, out-of-plane wind or earthquake and P-delta, to TMS 402-22 and ACI 318-19.

Wall

Between the supports, or above the base of a cantilever.

Concrete masonry

Sets the modulus of rupture (TMS Table 9.1.9.2).

Loads on top (lb/ft)

Down positive, uplift negative.

From the wall's center, such as a ledger.

Out-of-plane loads

Strength level, on the wall's face.

0 for no earthquake.

Point loads on a bearing plate (lb)

Such as a beam or girder. Each spreads over the plate's length plus 4 wall thicknesses, and the plate's bearing is checked.

Results

Drag to turn, scroll or pinch to zoom. A wall that fails is red.

Calculations

How the Wall Designer checks a wall

The designer checks a one-foot strip of a reinforced bearing wall, pinned top and bottom by a floor or roof, or a cantilever fixed at its base. The load on top sits at its eccentricity from the wall's center, the wind or earthquake pushes on the face, and the eccentric load and the lateral load are taken as bending the wall the same way. The wall's own weight is dead load: a pinned wall is checked at midheight with the weight above it, and a cantilever at its base. Every ASCE 7 load combination is run, with the vertical earthquake on the dead load and the earthquake force on the wall itself from ASCE 7 section 12.11.1.

  • Concrete masonry (CMU), TMS 402-22: fully grouted or grouted only at the bars, with a bar at the center of the cell or one at each face. Strength design checks the axial strength with slenderness, the slender wall procedure of section 9.3.5 with P-delta and the cracked stiffness, the axial stress limit, the most steel allowed, shear and bar size. Allowable stress design checks the axial load with slenderness, and the masonry's compressive stress and the steel's tension on the cracked section. Both check the service deflection, at most 0.007h.
  • Concrete, ACI 318-19 Chapter 11: the slender wall method of section 11.8 for walls pinned top and bottom, moment magnification with the wall's interaction diagram, or the simplified method of section 11.5.3 when the loads stay within the middle third. Each also checks out-of-plane shear, the least vertical and horizontal steel, bar spacing, layers and cover.
  • Point loads: a beam or girder on a bearing plate spreads over the plate's length plus 4 wall thicknesses, and the bearing under the plate is checked.

Not checked: in-plane shear and shear walls, walls with openings and the jambs beside them, lintels, unreinforced masonry, the prescriptive seismic reinforcement of TMS 402 section 7.4 and ACI Chapter 18, and the foundation. A partly grouted wall's ungrouted webs are left out of its section, which is a little conservative.