Category: Anchoring Systems

One of the core values at Simpson Strong-Tie is to help you succeed by providing innovative products, full-service engineering, field support, product testing and training, and on-time product delivery. We strive to provide innovative anchor systems solutions for infrastructure, commercial, industrial and residential projects. We offer a full array of mechanical anchors, adhesive solutions, and tools for concrete and masonry applications. Our anchor systems solutions, like all of our others, have passed the high performance and quality standards that are expected of Simpson Strong-Tie — and include the trusted level of service you’ve come to rely on.

Out-of-Plane Wall Anchorage Design

While the Simpson Strong-Tie Tye Gilb R&D lab in Stockton is a large testing facility, the world’s largest R&D lab is Mother Nature herself. Natural disasters such as earthquakes or storms put our engineering designs to the test. In this week’s blog post, I’ll be turning attention to wall anchorage for out-of-plane forces and the lessons we have learned from Mother Nature so far.

The 1979 building code incorporated many of the lessons learned from the 1971 San Fernando earthquake. In 1994, Mother Nature put the 1979 building code to the test with the January 17 Northridge earthquake. The Northridge earthquake showed that some of the increased design and detailing requirements in the 1979 building code worked well to improve performance over what was observed in 1971. However, it also revealed to researchers that acceleration at the roof level of single story warehouse buildings were three to four times the ground acceleration. The combination of higher than expected acceleration and excessive deformation of the wall anchorage assembly caused many wall anchorage failures.

Figure 1 Out-of-Plane Wall Anchorage Assembly

Several changes in the design forces used for wall anchorage and additional detailing requirements were incorporated in the 1997 Uniform Building Code. The requirements have been refined with each new building code, but overall the requirements and design forces have remained about the same under the current International Building Code. Wall anchorage design is governed by ASCE/SEI 7-16 Section 12.11. These provisions aim to mitigate the brittle wall anchorage failures observed in past earthquakes by increasing the design force and in Seismic Design Categories C through F, requiring:Continue Reading

The Anchorage to Concrete Challenge – How Do You Meet It?

We structural engineers here at Simpson Strong-Tie have a love/hate relationship with anchorage to concrete. Ever since the introduction of the strength design provisions in the 2024 IBC and ACI 318 Chapter 17, anchorage to concrete has been a challenge for designers, building officials and manufacturers. SEAONC’s recent testing and the resulting code changes offer some relief to wood-frame designers for sill-plate anchor design at the edge of concrete, but many challenges remain.

Concrete Breakout in a Shallow Slab

With the increasing demand for high-density housing and urban infill projects, designers are now faced with anchoring multi-story wood-framed shear walls to relatively thin elevated concrete slabs (typically referred to as podium slabs).  Overturning tension anchorage forces at the ends of shear walls in these projects can routinely be in the 40 kip range and even get as high as 60 kips or more.

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