Zero Building Weight: They only support their own weight
and never carry loads from roofs, upper floors, or beams.
Structural Frame Reliance: They sit inside a pre-existing
structural skeleton made of steel or reinforced concrete
columns and beams.
Wind Resistance Only: They are designed to withstand
lateral wind loads transferring across their face, but they
pass these forces directly into the main building frame.
Crack Vulnerability: They must include flexible joints at the
top and sides so the main building frame can deflect
without crushing the brittle masonry blocks.
Commercial High-Rises: Placed as exterior facade
enclosures inside steel or concrete skeletons.
Industrial Warehouses: Placed between large structural
columns to partition interior spaces into separate zones.
Interior Partitioning: Placed inside office buildings to create
permanent, fire-rated room dividers.
Multi-Family Housing: Placed as non-structural privacy
walls between separate apartment units.
Primary Weight Support: They actively transfer heavy vertical
loads from roofs, floors, and upper stories down to the
foundation.
Mandatory Steel Reinforcement: They require internal vertical
rebar and solid grout to handle the combination of downward
building weight and lateral wind or seismic forces.
Structural Integrity Hazard: Removing or altering any part of a
load-bearing wall without engineered temporary support will
cause structural sagging or catastrophic collapse.
Thicker Foundations: They require wide, continuous concrete
footings beneath them to evenly distribute the massive weight of
the building into the soil.
Residential Foundations: Placed as the exterior perimeter
basement walls holding back soil and supporting the house.
Low to Mid-Rise Buildings: Placed as the exterior structural shell
for hotels, schools, and retail centers.
Elevator & Stairwells: Placed as the central structural "core" of a
building to provide seismic stability.
Firewalls & Demising Walls: Placed between townhomes to
simultaneously bear floor loads and stop fire spread.
(not modeled in ram as wall,
usually just a line load)
(gravity)