MARCH JLC 1997 by Patricia Hamilton New custom-designed oceanfront homes all seem to share one feature: lots of glass looking out on the water. In the case of one house we recently built, the architect filled most of the east side of the house with an expansive two-story window-wall (see Figure 1), so no effective plywood shear walls could be incorporated (see "Strength of Plywood Sheathing," Practical Engineering, 11/96). To achieve lateral stability on that side of the house, we integrated a structural steel moment frame into the wood framing. A Moment for Definitions The word "moment" is a physics term adopted by engineers to refer to "the measure of a force with reference to its effect in producing rotation." (This
