Wood-frame load paths and shear walls, engineered wood products, reinforced masonry (CMU) wall design, connections and detailing, and where each system is actually used in residential and light-commercial construction.
Wood-frame and reinforced masonry construction carry the overwhelming majority of residential and light-commercial buildings, and most real projects use both on the same job — a wood-framed superstructure on a CMU foundation wall, or masonry veneer over a wood-framed backup wall. This module works through the wood-frame load path from joists and rafters through headers and shear walls, why engineered wood products like glulam, LVL, and I-joists exist and how they differ from sawn lumber, and how a reinforced CMU wall's vertical bars, bond beams, and grouted cells combine into a working structural system.
By the end of this module you should be able to explain why a shear wall's hold-down matters as much as its sheathing and nailing schedule, why grout is specified at a much higher slump than structural concrete, and why the most common durability failures in both materials trace back to moisture and detailing rather than to a shortfall in the material's inherent strength — the same load-path and connection discipline this program's wind & seismic and foundations modules build on next.