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Are shear wall panels the correct type of plywood or OSB?

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Are shear wall panels the correct type of plywood or OSB?

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All of our structural shear wall plywood panels are CDX Douglas fir-larch APA rated sheathing Struct 1 Group 1 with a span rating of 32/16 unless U.O.N. on the structural plans. If the structural plans call-out Struct 2 we will still use 5 ply CDX at a minimum. We don’t use OSB for shear walls because of the swelling and nail popping associated with OSB plywood. There are earlier and more extensive fastener fatigue failures in the cyclic load shear wall tests with OSB than with CDX plywood. This is due to higher density strength in OSB than CDX plywood. It is theorized that denser OSB sheathing deforms less along the nail shank in contact with the sheathing, creating a “fixed end” condition on the fastener. As a result, higher internal bending stresses in the nail shank may develop at locations below the surface of the wood framing, thus causing earlier fatigue failures of the fasteners under cyclic loading. If the fasteners don’t fail than there’s more potential of panel edge tear out

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