Sheathing Overlapping and Attachment Methods for Cold-Formed Steel Shear Walls with Corrugated Steel Sheathing

Abstract

Cold-formed steel (CFS) shear walls sheathed with corrugated steel sheathing are a feasible solution to non-combustible high structural performance CFS shear walls in mid-rise buildings. Corrugated steel sheathings have high in-plane strength and stiffness due to the cross sectional shape of the sheet. This paper presents an experimental study on two specific issues: (1) the sheathing overlapping configurations and their impact to the shear wall performance, (2) the attachment method for sheathing to framing. For the overlapping issue, one overlap and two overlaps in the corrugated sheets were experimentally investigated, it was found that the overlap differences did not cause significant different behaviors and strength of CFS shear walls. For the sheathing-to-framing attachment method, self-drilling screws and dual spot welding were studied. A portable spot welder with dual heads was used in this research. Connection tests and full scale shear wall tests were conducted to study the two different connection methods. It was found that the dual spot welding yielded a weaker connection than the conventional self-drilling screw connections. This paper presents the details of the test programs, research findings and recommendations for CFS shear wall applications

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