In LAVA software, shear lines allow you to adjust the method to distribute the lateral force as Stiffness or Capacity based.
SDPWS 4.3.3.4.1 requires ‘Shear distribution to individual shear walls in a shear wall line shall provide the same calculated deflection in each shear wall.’ To comply with this requirement, user can define ‘Shear Line’ in LAVA distributing shear force by ‘Stiffness’.
However, SDPWS 4.3.3.4.1 Exceptions 1 also permits shear load to be distributed to individual wall segments proportional to their shear capacities, provided nominal shear capacities are appropriately adjusted. To comply with this requirement, user can define ‘Shear Line’ in LAVA distributing shear force by ‘Capacity’.
Note: The Capacity method checks the aspect ratio (h/bs) and if it’s greater than 2:1 the capacity is multiplied by 2bs/h.
LAVA automates this process based on your selection when you draw the Shear Line. You can define whether you want the Shear Line to be distributed based on Stiffness which shows all of the deflections equal on the walls in this example:
Or you can define the shear line to distribute based on Capacity which shows the shear wall distribution based meet the of the shear walls.
Click here for a step-by-step process showing how you can use LAVA to build this type of model and an example model file to see it for yourself.