Beam Restraints Provided by Walls with Openings

No generally accepted design criteria are available for determining the restraint that a reinforced concrete wall exerts on a beam framing into it. By means of graphs the authors of this paper attempt to provide this information in a convenient form. The report includes the results of an analytical solution for a plate, considered to be equivalent to a wall, to which a local edge moment is applied. The effective stiffness of the plate is converted into an equivalent beam stiffness. Then, base d on experimental evidence, the reduction in restraint caused by certain types of rectangular openings is indicated. These results are shown on graphs, which enable one to determine easily the effective stiffness of a plate or a wall without openings-or with openings of different h eights but of width equal to the h eight of the wall-in terms of the restraint of an equivalent beam. The proposed method of analysis is based on the assumption of the elastic behavior of material.