The lightweight concrete wall is one of the construction materials that speed up the building process, easy to install, and durable. It also has good thermal insulation property, sound absorption and fire resistance characteristics. It is considered as an environment-friendly sustainable material produced with the least energy demand.

lightweight concrete wall is widely used for construction in residential, administrative, commercial and industrial buildings. This is due to its high compressive strength and a wide range of uses.

Nonlinear axial load capacity of lightweight concrete walls can be improved through incorporating the elastic modulus in design equations to account for the bending moment induced by eccentricity and slenderness of the walls. Currently, existing simplified design equations from standards and published literature do not account for the bending moment.

Therefore, this research introduces a semi-empirical design equation to predict the axial strength of lightweight concrete walls with better accuracy. The proposed design equation is validated against experimental and FEA results and can be used as a practical tool for the design of axially loaded lightweight concrete walls.

Compared with the current design equation, the proposed equation yields more accurate predictions of axial strength for all tested lightweight wall panels and provides Pcal /Pexp ratios ranging from 0.88 to 1.14, which is more conservative than those of the standard and published literature.

Moreover, the proposed design equation also accounts for the flexural strength of the concrete wall, which is important to resist the bending moment induced by eccentricity or slenderness. The bending strength of a concrete wall is influenced by the compressive strength and the elastic modulus of the aggregate.