Concrete Special Structural Wall ACI 318-08 Spreadsheet

The International Building Code (IBC) requires all concrete walls in seismic category D, E, and F, must be designed as a Special Reinforced Concrete Shear Wall. Basically all concrete walls in the West Coast of the US must be designed as a special wall.

The calcs in this spreadsheet are transparent unlike the typical blackbox calculations.

Also the figure of the wall in the spreadsheet changes with the input parameters.

The spreadsheet checks essentially all of the applicable codes in the ACI 318-08. The spreadsheet contains extensive boolean programming to address the convoluted nature of the code provisions for special concrete structural walls.

Anyone who has designed a special concrete structural wall knows how extremely complicated it can be, and will surely appreciate how easy to use and how thorough this spreadsheet is.

IMPORTANT: If upon opening this file, a warning message about circular referencing appears, DO NOT CLICK OK. You must CLICK CANCEL, click on Tools -> Options -> Calculation tab and enable Iteration as shown in the picture to the right. or the spreadsheet will not work properly. The reason for iteration: A vertical axial load P applied eccentrically on the wall will induce a deflection in the wall. The axial load P applied eccentrially on a wall that is deflected will cause it to deflect more. If this iteration was to be calculated by hand, it will take multiple iterations before the numbers converge to an acceptable level.

Calculation Reference
Reinforced Concrete

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