Strength and stiffness determination of shear wall panels in cold-formed steel framing

Shear wall panels, as the one of the primary lateral load resisting elements, have been extensively used in lightweight framing of low- and mid-rise residential construction, particularly in seismic applications. In current practice, lateral strengths of shear wall panels with cold-formed steel framing are primarily determined by tests, owing to the lack of applicable analytical methods. Meanwhile, the use of numerical methods such as the finite element method has rarely been employed in the design practice to determine the lateral strength of shear wall panels due to the extensive amount of computational effort associated with the modelling. Presented ill this paper is an analytical method to determine the ultimate lateral strength of the shear wall panel and its associated displacement. The method takes into account the factors that primarily affect the behaviour and the strength of the shear wall panel, such as material properties, geometrical dimensions and construction details. Lateral strengths obtained from the proposed method for shear wall panels with different sheathing materials and steel stud thicknesses, sizes and spacing of sheathing-to-stud fasteners were compared with those of recent experimental investigations. The comparison demonstrates that the predicted results are in good agreement with those of the tests. Therefore, it is recommended that the proposed method be used in engineering practice. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.