Behavior of Wood‐Framed Shear Walls

Shear walls play an important role in the wind and seismic resistance of low‐rise wood‐framed buildings. The behavior of shear walls is primarily governed by the nail force‐slip characteristics. The bending stiffness of studs and the shear stiffness of the sheathing play an important role in providing the stiffness. But the studs and the sheathing play a secondary role in defining the load‐deformation properties. New models are presented to represent the shear behavior of these walls. It is shown that the proposed models are comparable to the finite element model, and give results which are in good agreement with the test results. The proposed models are particularly suitable for repetitive applications, e.g., in a nonlinear dynamic analysis.