Abstract
It is a common practice to design basement walls acting as a one-way slab or plate with idealized boundary conditions, resulting in potentially inefficient design. The walls are often supported by buttress columns and side walls in the vertical direction, thereby acting as a two-way slab. In this study, structural behavior of single-story, three-span basement wall subjected to lateral soil pressure was investigated. Three dimensional finite element analyses were conducted to determine the force distribution on the wall. Based on the numerical studies, a regression analysis was carried out to determine the design values of moments in vertical and horizontal directions as well as shear forces on the wall and design charts are developed. The proposed design method with accompanying design charts would enable practicing engineers to estimate member forces on the wall for preliminary design purpose without resorting to finite element analysis. Numerical examples demonstrated the applicability of the proposed method.
