Calculation on the Vertical Cracking Load of Adaptive-Slit Shear Walls

Experimental studies showed that vertical cracks appeared along the cold-formed steel or the steel sheet on the adaptive-slit shear walls when the wall was subjected to horizontal earthquake loading, and the adaptive-slit shear wall experienced the loading process from the whole wall section to the slitted wall section. So the appearance and development of the vertical cracks can reflect the seismic behavior of adaptive-slit shear walls. According to the mechanical characteristics of the adaptive-slit shear walls, this paper proposed a method to calculate the cracking load. It is found that the calculated results has a good agreement with the experimental results.