Determination Of The Lateral Strength Of Shear Wall Panels With Cold-Formed Steel Frames

In current construction practice, lateral strengths of shear wall panels with cold formed steel framing are primarily determined by tests owing to the lack of analytical methods. Meanwhile, the use of numerical methods such as the finite element method has been limited to researchers investigating the behaviour of SWP. Moreover, the finite element method has rarely been employed in design practice to determine the lateral strength of shear wall panels because the modelling is cumbersome. Presented in this paper is an analytical method to determine the ultimate lateral strength of shear wall panels. The method accounts for the factors that affect the behaviour and the strength of shear wall panels, such as material properties and thickness of sheathing, sizes of the C-shape steel studs, spacing of fasteners, and so on. Lateral strengths obtained from the proposed method for sheathing wall panels were compared with those of recent experimental investigations. The results of the comparison demonstrate that the predicted lateral strengths are in good agreement with those of the tests. Therefore, the proposed method is recommended for engineering practice.