| Since 1990's, light wood frame houses have been introduced from North America to China, especially to the economically more developed coastal areas. The wind load in these areas exceeds the upper bound set by the Chinese design code, only within which can the houses be built just following the constructional details. Beyond the bound, the lateral resistance needs to be further investigated.The lateral load resistance system in light wood frame houses consists of diaphragms and shear walls. The loads are transfered to shear walls from diaphragms and eventually to the foundations. Therefore, shear walls are very important components of light wood frame house, and it is of great value to do some research on the performance of shear walls under lateral load.Researchers abroad have conducted shear wall tests since 1940's. After decades of study, people now have more comprehensive understanding on the performance of shear walls. However, in China, the research is just in a beginning stage. Furthermore, nails made in China are used to connect panel and stud, this makes the study more usefull.In this paper, seven groups of shear walls, each consisting two walls, were tested. The lateral resistance of the shear walls was thus investigated experimentally. The main conclusions are as follows.The ultimate load of a shear wall equals to the sum of its segments that are devided by the size of a sheathing panel. But the initial stiffness is much greater than the sum of stiffness of its segments.It is conservative not to consider the contributions from the segments above and below an opening to the overall performance of a shear wall.Gypsum boards can obviously improve the ultimate load and the initial stiffness of shear wall with OSB panels.Also, finite element models of shear walls were developed and were validated by test results. Numerical modelling of the lateral resistance of shear walls was conducted, the performance of the walls was further investigated beyond the testing scope.
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