Experimental study of a shear wall with numerous small openings

Many small openings for piping and ducts are usually required in the shear walls for PWR nuclear power plant. It is generally believed that such openings oadversely affect the strength and stiffness of shear walls. However, little information is available concerning the behavior of walls with numerous small openings. Therefore, tests using wall specimens and an analysis using an FEM program were carried out to investigate this behavior. Main findings are as follows: 1) The ultimate strength of a shear wall with numerous small openings may be obtained by using the effective area at the critical cross section of the shear wall. 2) Shear walls with openings can be restored to the same shear strength and stiffness as shear walls without openings by diagonal reinforcement. (orig./HP)