The Tedds masonry wall section design (TMS) calculation used by Tekla Structural Designer has been enhanced to use the T section method to calculate combined axial and bending for partially grouted, reinforced walls.

• This calculation checks the capacity of one or more cross-sections of a concrete or clay masonry wall panel consisting of single-wythe construction featuring solid or hollow masonry. Hollow units may be grouted and include vertical and horizontal reinforcement. The cross-section designs for the wall panel may be subject to axial forces and in-plane and out-of-plane moments and shears.

• The calculation includes designs in accordance with both the allowable stress design (ASD) and strength design (STR) methods.

• In accordance with TMS 402/602-22, TMS 402/602-16 and TMS MSJC-13.

Wall Patches are an evolution of the existing Result Line method for the designing areas within masonry wall panels for local effects. They enable unique grout and reinforcement to be designed within a specified area.

This is particularly useful for wall panels with openings:

It can also be used to design for local load effects:

Each wall patch automatically generates a group of horizontal result lines; a user specified number of result lines plus additional result lines at points of interest (at tops and bottoms of openings). Each result line collects the cross section forces at its location.

If the “Quick” creation mode were used to create a patch to the side of a window opening, it would result in a patch with 5 associated result lines as shown in the example below: RL1 at panel bottom; RL2 at opening bottom; RL3 at panel mid-height; RL4 at opening top; RL5 at panel top

Other creation options are available to provide more flexibility in definition and once defined, the number of patch result lines can be modified, and the patch bounds can be easily resized.

Default workflow - Accepting the default settings begins a workflow where the grout and reinforcement is uniform across the whole panel in the final design and local forces in the wall patches are checked against that uniform construction. The wall patch areas are set to “as panel”, linking the wall patch grout and reinforcement definitions to the parent wall panel:

• Define the wall construction, grout and reinforcement for each wall panel in Tekla Structural Designer. The Check in Tedds button on the Design ribbon will check the design of all defined wall panels and patches and return design results to review.

• If the design fails at some patch locations then you adjust the wall properties (more grouting and/or more reinforcement) to achieve a pass.

• Grout spacing must be changed in Tekla Structural Designer - reinforcement may be changed from Tekla Structural Designer or during interactive design in Tedds

  • Changes to grout or reinforcement spacing to a wall panel or wall patch while the property is set to “as panel” will update the parent panel and all other patches that are set to “as panel”

Alternative workflow - When uniform wall construction does not meet design requirement, wall patches can be used to define and design localized strengthening in the wall patch area:

• Simply uncheck the required “as panel” setting and then define grouting and/or reinforcement that will be specific to that patch area.

• Check or Design in Tedds commands for a wall panel will execute the same process for all wall patches within a panel and return design results to review.

For more details about using wall patches in the design process, see masonry design workflow

Existing models - if you open a model from a previous version in release 2025, any masonry wall result lines will be automatically transformed to wall patches. This enables you to maintain the existing design while also giving you the flexibility to improve upon your user defined design zones.

The properties of the transformed wall patches in this scenario are configured to only capture analysis results local to the original result line (Height = 0, Result Lines = 1) . They are also set to use the same grout and reinforcement as the associated wall panel.

You might therefore choose to resize the transformed wall patches and add more result lines to them (or create new wall patches) in order to benefit from the additional features of wall patches.

This enhancement is covered in a separate topic, see: New Edge release options for meshed walls.

The following enhancements were introduced in the Tekla Structural Designer 2024 Service Packs:

• Database enhancements - a new type of 'Wire' reinforcement has been added to the Reinforcement database in this release for masonry wall horizontal joint reinforcement as shown in the picture below. The other type of horizontal reinforcement which is “Bond beams" uses the existing loose bars in the database.

  

  This enhancement was introduced in Tekla Structural Designer 2024 SP3

• SI (metric) units - full support for masonry wall design using the SI (metric) unit system has been added, with new default masonry grades added for this purpose. Note that existing models previously designed with metric units using customary grades will need to be re-designed after selecting the respective metric grade.

  

  This enhancement was introduced in Tekla Structural Designer 2024 SP3

• Wall Properties Reinforcement Data - masonry walls now include reinforcement data directly in their properties. As shown in the pictures below, this applies to both the Properties Window and the individual wall Properties dialog. Both vertical and horizontal reinforcement can be optionally defined, with horizontal reinforcement having options of either “Bond beam” (loose bars) or “Joint reinforcement” (wire - see above). Note that the horizontal reinforcement option is only available when vertical reinforcement is specified. For both vertical and horizontal reinforcement there is control of all of; the reinforcement type, class, layers, size and spacing.

  

This enhancement was introduced in Tekla Structural Designer 2024 SP3

• Reporting - in addition to the above, enhancements have also been made to the reporting of reinforcement data - as shown in the pictures below the masonry wall design summary tabular view is now expanded to include the wall reinforcement details, giving a fuller summary of the design of masonry walls in general. Grout and reinforcement information has also been added to wall panel tooltips.

  

  This enhancement was introduced in Tekla Structural Designer 2024 SP3

• Export to Tekla Tedds Settings - The “Export to Tekla Tedds” > Report detail Settings now control the level of report detail when Export to Tekla Tedds is used for any designed masonry wall(s).

  Note the following:

  • The setting is applied each time a wall is successfully checked/designed.

  • The setting can be adjusted from inside the Tedds calculation UI to achieve a different detail level and is saved until the wall is checked/designed again.

  • Level of output detail can thus be saved on a panel by panel basis until they are rechecked/redesigned.

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    This enhancement was introduced in Tekla Structural Designer 2024 SP2

• Wall masonry properties added to edit dialog - the individual wall edit dialog now includes all the masonry properties as shown in the picture below.

  

  This enhancement was introduced in Tekla Structural Designer 2024 SP1

• Tedds Project Manager - when exporting the results for several walls to Tedds to produce a Project of several Tedds design documents, these are now more logically organized in the Tedds Project Manager, using a Model > Wall > Panel > Result line hierarchy, similarly to results of concrete wall designs.

This enhancement was introduced in Tekla Structural Designer 2024 SP1