Design Methodology for Cold-Formed Steel Wall-Framed Buildings Under Lateral Loadings: Fid-Bau Portal

Design Methodology for Cold-Formed Steel Wall-Framed Buildings Under Lateral Loadings

Sonkar, C. / Dewangan, A. / Mittal, A. K. / Kumar, A.

Being light in weight, fast to construct, non-combustible, durable, recyclable, etc., Cold-Formed Steel (CFS) wall panels fabricated with lipped C-sections and sheathing boards are widely utilized in low and mid-rise buildings, often as structural element with lateral/seismic loads. Design guidelines for CFS buildings are not well-developed for different sheathing boards against axial (gravity) and lateral loads, which hampers the adoption and application of the CFS wall-framed construction technology on the field at a large scale. In CFS Shear Wall Panels (CFSSWP) with lateral eccentric load, end studs of the assembled frame will be under tension or compression as the assembly in whole tries to show resilience against the load applied. Therefore, CFS end studs’ axial strength (generally compression) is pivotal for estimating lateral strength of a CFSSWP. In the present study, a modified approach is proposed for assessing the lateral strength of CFSSWP. The modified approach is validated with existing experimental studies given by Rogers et al. (Steel frame/wood panel shear walls: preliminary design information for use with the 2005 NBCC, 2004) and compared with approximate method proposed by Xu (A simplified method of evaluating lateral strengths of shear wall panels with cold formed steel framing, 2006). Direct strength method (DSM) based on AISI S100-16 is engaged here for evaluating axial capacity of CFS wall. According to this methodology, local (P_crl), distortional (P_crd), and global (P_cre) elastic buckling loads obtained will be utilized to get the actual buckling loads as per procedure detailed by Vieira and Schafer (J. Struct. Eng. 139:772–786, 2013) and Sonkar et al. (Struct. Eng. 146:04020224, 2020). The modified approach considers broad range of parameters that might affect the resilience (stiffness) and capacity of CFSSWP, namely material configuration, geometric configuration of studs (framing members), assembly configuration of CFSSWP, and details such as size and spacing of the sheathing to frame fastening assembly. The adopted methods provide a ready tool for practitioners and designers for assessing the axial and lateral strength of CFSSWP for designing a CFS wall-framed building. The estimated results agree well with the experimental results with a standard deviation of 4–5%.