how thick is a shear wall ?

Question

and how far can you place them from one another?

Answer 1

There are no hard and fast rules. For example I designed a huge 5000 SF luxury house on the shore of Cape Cod. The wind loads are big, as you might expect. I think I was designing for 150 mph winds.

The house, especially the rear had a huge amount of windows and not far apart. So it was hard to find suitable locations to instal shear walls. So I ended up putting a lot of them in the interior, where normally, you would only have needed a normal wall.



The thickness is just the width of the stud, spec'd by Building Code and a sheet of 1 inch ply.



The Building Code will specify the requirement of the stud wall. For example, it may say, wherever you can get a width of 4 feet and a certain minimum height. The calcs based on loads and can be largely wind loads will tell you how much square footage of sheer wall you require.



There are some good books out there. House construction engineering, wood design, etc.

Answer 2

Shear Wall Thickness

Answer 3

The spacing and thickness depend on the height of the structure,

the anticipated horizontal forces, the dead load, center of gravity,

and the center's moment of inertia with respect to the

foundation.

Answer 4

shear walls deigned to bear laterl loads so half of the beam will wahe compression and the other half will take tention this for beam it self the base u have to take moment of lateral load at the base