How mid-pier walls are represented in solver models

Note: There are no advantages to be gained from using mid-pier walls in place of meshed walls. Mid-pier walls are only retained in Tekla Structural Designer for continuity reasons, (so that old models containing them can still be opened). For new models we recommend meshed shear walls are used instead.

Wall beam and wall column elements

Wall beam elements are inserted into walls primarily to collect slab mesh nodes and line elements. For mid-pier walls, they are generated along the top and bottom edges of the wall and also at intermediate levels where an object (e.g. slab, beam, truss) is physically connected.

Note: Only horizontal wall beam elements can be generated in mid-pier walls - sloping wall beam elements cannot be generated - this will be indicated by an error in validation.

Each mid-pier wall object also has a single vertical wall column element in the middle of the wall, from the top to the bottom level.

Modification Factors

The modification factors applied to concrete walls in the analysis depend on whether they have been specified as meshed or mid-pier.

Mid-pier wall example

Consider the following two stack mid-pier wall supporting a slab; the wall has different thickness panels aligned to produce a flush surface on one face.

The wall beam and wall column elements are always located along the insertion line used to position the wall originally, irrespective of any alignment offsets that have been specified, so for this example, the elements are formed as shown below:

Note: To see wall beam elements, wall column elements and solver nodes: open a Solver View, and then in Scene Content select 1 D Elements> Geometry and Solver Nodes> Geometry.