Analysis of Shear Walls with Openings

Openings are often introduced into shear walls in multistoried buildings for either architectural or environmental reasons. These openings reduce the efficiency and change the deformation characteristics of the shear walls, depending on the distribution of the loads and the geometry of the walls with openings. Variations of the material properties also affect the stress distribution. The use of the finite-element method in analyzing these problems is found to be convenient and more accurate than conventional approximate methods. A model shear wall problem is selected and analyzed by the finite-element method and the results are presented. It was observed that local distortions occurred at the junctions of the lintel beams and the shear walls due to the bending moments, shear forces, and axial loads carried by the lintel beams. Because of these distortions, the bending moments on the lintel beams were found to be much less than the bending moments obtained from other approximate methods of analysis.