An alternative method for seismic design of cold-formed steel framing building

An alternative method for seismic design of cold-formed steel framing building

Medium and low-rise buildings constructed with cold-formed steel (CFS) framing walls have gained considerable attention owing to their ease of construction, cost-effectiveness, and favorable strength-to-weight ratio. The use of CFS in commercial and residential buildings has become a widespread construction method in Japan, Australia, Europe, and America. However, due to the complexity of CFS wall structures and the mechanical behaviors of the building structure system, over the past 20 years, research institutions worldwide have dedicated significant resources to continuously developing simplified seismic resistance design and verification procedures for CFS buildings. Therefore, this study attempts to establish a simplified seismic design procedure for CFS buildings based on ETABS software and related seismic design theories. First, the equivalent energy elastic-plastic method is used to model the equivalent steel wall (ESW) based on the previous CFS framing wall shear test results. Then, the building model is established with ESW. Finally, a sequence of seismic pushover analyses for the building structures is conducted through the use of ETABS. The results show that the alternative method for seismic design and verification procedure established using the building seismic design code and verification theory combined with ETABS is highly feasible.