ACI 318, minimum nonbearing wall thickness

[swmiami]

It appears that the minimum wall thickness (1/30) requirement for nonbearing walls in Section 14.6.1 of ACI318-05 is for wall designed by Empirical Design Method only (14.5), because there is no thickness limit if the wall is designed by Section 14.4 or 14.8. Can anyone confirm this and/or provide some background information?

If this is true, Section 14.6.1 should be 14.5.3.3 to make sense.

 

[WillisV]

The minimum thickness in section 14.6.1 as you pointed out is for NONBEARING walls - like partition walls. These walls are not designed - they are just put there.

The minimum thickness for load BEARING walls designed per the empirical method is provided in 14.5.3 as 1/25. Appropriately enough this section is entitled "Minimum thickness of walls designed by empirical design method."

For walls designed using methods other than the empirical method (as required for combined flexure and axial load) there is no hard thickness limit - it will be controlled by the increasing slenderness/p-delta effects for thinner walls.