Shear Wall Summary

Shear Wall Summary#

The ShearWallSummary class lets you work with a list of shear walls and perform checks, design, and report generation for all of them at once.

Creating Concrete and Steel Materials#

Define the concrete and steel materials to be used across all walls:

from mento import Concrete_ACI_318_19, SteelBar, MPa

conc = Concrete_ACI_318_19(name="H25", f_c=25 * MPa)
steel = SteelBar(name="ADN 420", f_y=420 * MPa)

Supported design codes: ACI 318-19 and CIRSOC 201-25.

Loading Input Data from Excel#

The wall dimensions, forces, and reinforcement details are typically loaded from an Excel input file. The file should have a specific format and units:

import pandas as pd

input_df = pd.read_excel('Mento-Input.xlsx', sheet_name='Walls', usecols='B:O', skiprows=4)

The Excel file should contain the following columns:

  • Level: Building level identifier (e.g., Level 1, Level 2).

  • Label: Wall identifier (e.g., M1, M2).

  • Comb.: Load combination label.

  • t: Wall thickness in cm.

  • lw: Wall in-plane length in m.

  • hw: Wall story height in m.

  • cc: Clear cover in mm.

  • Nx: Axial force in kN.

  • Vz: Shear force in kN.

  • My: Moment in kNm.

  • dbh: Horizontal (transverse) rebar diameter in mm.

  • sh: Horizontal rebar spacing in cm.

  • dbv: Vertical rebar diameter in mm.

  • sv: Vertical rebar spacing in cm.

Grouping Logic#

Multiple rows with the same (Level, Label) combination represent different load combinations for the same wall. The summary groups them automatically: one wall object is created per unique (Level, Label) pair, and all force rows are attached to it.

All rows in a group must have identical geometry (t, lw, hw, cc). A ValueError is raised if geometry differs within a group.

For a quick test you can build the DataFrame manually:

data = {
    "Level": ["", "Level 1", "Level 1", "Level 1", "Level 2", "Level 2"],
    "Label": ["", "M1", "M1", "M1", "M1", "M1"],
    "Comb.": ["", "ELU 1", "ELU 2", "ELU 3", "ELU 1", "ELU 2"],
    "t": ["cm", 20, 20, 20, 20, 20],
    "lw": ["m", 3.0, 3.0, 3.0, 3.0, 3.0],
    "hw": ["m", 3.0, 3.0, 3.0, 3.0, 3.0],
    "cc": ["mm", 25, 25, 25, 25, 25],
    "Nx": ["kN", 0, 0, -301, -150, 55.5],
    "Vz": ["kN", 264, 138, 152, 32.3, 163],
    "My": ["kNm", -172, -90, -234, 143, -278],
    "dbh": ["mm", 8, 8, 8, 8, 8],
    "sh": ["cm", 20, 20, 20, 20, 20],
    "dbv": ["mm", 12, 12, 12, 12, 12],
    "sv": ["cm", 15, 15, 15, 15, 15],
}
input_df = pd.DataFrame(data)

Creating the ShearWallSummary Object#

Once the input data is ready, create a ShearWallSummary object:

from mento import ShearWallSummary

wall_summary = ShearWallSummary(concrete=conc, steel_bar=steel, wall_list=input_df)

To verify that units were applied correctly, inspect the data attribute:

wall_summary.data

The number of unique walls (nodes) and their keys can be inspected:

len(wall_summary.nodes)   # Number of unique walls
wall_summary.wall_keys    # List of (Level, Label) tuples

Checking Wall Capacity#

Use check() to get a summary table with DCR (Demand-Capacity Ratio) values for all walls. The worst-case load combination is reported for each wall:

wall_summary.check()

The result is a DataFrame with columns: Level, Label, t, lw, hw, horizontal rebar, vertical rebar, reinforcement ratios, worst-case Vu, capacity, DCR, and a pass/fail status (✅ / ❌).

Note

All walls must have rebar assigned before calling check(). If any wall has no rebar (dbh/sh/dbv/sv all zero), a ValueError is raised with a suggestion to either run design() first or provide rebar in the input.

Viewing Detailed Results#

For a full breakdown per wall (all load combinations) use shear_results(). It accepts an optional index (1-based) to retrieve results for a single wall:

# All walls — all load combinations
wall_summary.shear_results()

# Single wall (1-based index)
wall_summary.shear_results(index=2)

For step-by-step detail of a specific wall you can also access the node directly:

wall_summary.nodes[0].shear_results_detailed()

Designing Reinforcement#

design() runs automatic shear design for every wall and returns a DataFrame with the filled rebar columns (dbh, sh, dbv, sv):

designed_df = wall_summary.design()

The design selects horizontal and vertical mesh for the worst-case load combination across all forces assigned to each wall.

Exporting and Importing a Design#

After running design(), save the result to Excel so it can be reviewed or edited:

wall_summary.export_design("WallDesign.xlsx")

To reload an edited file and rebuild the summary with the new reinforcement:

wall_summary.import_design("WallDesign.xlsx")

Exporting Results to Excel#

The DataFrames returned by check() and shear_results() can be written to Excel directly:

wall_summary.check().to_excel("wall_results.xlsx", index=False)

Detailed Word Report#

results_detailed_doc() generates a Word document (.docx) that contains:

  • Full shear detail for one selected wall (materials, geometry, forces, limit checks, capacity).

  • Summary tables (wall data, shear results, DCR check) for all walls.

The document is saved to the current working directory with the name Shear_Wall_Summary_{design_code}.docx.

# Detailed report with wall 1 as the reference (default)
wall_summary.results_detailed_doc()

# Use wall 3 as the reference
wall_summary.results_detailed_doc(index=3)

The index parameter is 1-based and must be within the range of walls in the summary. An IndexError is raised for out-of-range values.