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Wayne State University

Reliability and effect of partially restrained wood shear walls

Abstract

dc:description.abstract

<p> <b>ABSTRACT</b> </p> <p>RELIABILITY AND EFFECT OF PARTIALLY RESTRAINED WOOD SHEAR WALLS</p> <p>by</p> <p>JOHN J. GRUBER</p> <p>MARCH 2012</p> <p>Advisor: Dr. Gongkang Fu</p> <p>Major: Civil Engineering</p> <p>Degree: Doctor or Philosophy</p> <p>The prescriptive design of the most widely used residential building code in the United States, the IRC, allows the use of partially restrained wood shear walls to resist wind and seismic loads. Wind load is the most common controlling lateral design load for these structures. In contrast, the complimenting building code, the IBC, requires either a restraining dead load or a mechanical hold down device to resist overturning. To prescribe a safe structure, it is important to know the effect of partial restraint on the overturning resistance of wood shear walls constructed in accordance with the IRC and equally important whether the partially restrained wood shear walls provide the same level of reliability as fully restrained wood shear walls for wind load. This is the focus of this research.</p> <p>Twenty five Monotonic tests were conducted of 4' x 8' wood shear walls with five varying restraining methods (wall types). There were five sets of five wall types. One of the sets had only an anchor bolt, three sets had different dead loads with one anchor bolt, and one set had a mechanical hold down. The results of the test program were used to determine the partial restraint effect, create a nonlinear finite element model, and to determine the statistical data required to perform a Monte Carlo simulation of the wall behavior.</p> <p>The Monte Carlo simulation result was used to calibrate a nonlinear partial restraint factor to a target reliability index of 3.25. The calibration was performed for both ASD and LRFD load combinations as required by the IBC. The research concludes with a closed-form solution, including the calibrated nonlinear partial restraint factor developed, to determine the unit shear capacity of a partially restrained or fully restrained (with dead load or mechanical hold down) wood shear wall constructed in accordance with the IRC by utilizing the fully restrained nominal unit shear values of AF&PA's Special Design Provisions for Wind and Seismic.</p>

Degree

thesis:*
Name thesis:degree_name
Ph.D.
Level thesis:degree_level
Open Access Dissertation
Discipline thesis:degree_discipline
Civil and Environmental Engineering
Year dc:date.available
2012

Author and committee

dc:creator, dc:contributor.*
Author dc:creator
  • Gruber, John Joseph
Contributors dc:contributor
  • Gonkang Fu

Subjects

dc:subject × 2

Identifiers

dc:identifier.*
OAI identifier oai:identifier
oai:digitalcommons.wayne.edu:oa_dissertations-1441

Chain of custody

source
Harvested from
Wayne State University
Base URL
digitalcommons.wayne.edu/do/oai/
Last updated
2026-07-24
Source record
OAI-PMH GetRecord
citation

Gruber, John Joseph. Reliability and effect of partially restrained wood shear walls. Open Access Dissertation thesis, 2012. https://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/oa_dissertations/442