MBMA-Sponsored Cold-Formed Steel Research 50th Anniversary Retrospective

摘要

The Metal Building Manufacturers Association (MBMA) was established in 1956, and has been a major sponsor and participant of cold-formed steel research over the years. MBMA's 50th anniversary is an excellent opportunity to look back on this body of work in a historical perspective. When founded, MBMA's main purpose was to jointly attack technical matters that could not be accomplished by individual companies. The MBMA Technical Committee first met on April 18, 1957 in Chicago, IL. It is an obvious challenge for competitors in the marketplace to come together in this fashion, but the founding members of MBMA really set the cooperative tone that would shape the group. The first order of business for the new organization was to determine the common technical issues facing the industry and to collectively develop an action plan. It is no surprise that two of the first three problems that were identified involved cold-formed steel. One issue had to do with deflection criteria in the building codes for metal siding and roofing. The other was the minimum gage specified in the American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI) Light Gage Steel Design Manual that was felt to be overly restrictive. This paper will provide a chronology of the MBMA sponsored cold-formed steel research that has been instrumental in shaping the North American Specification for the Design of Cold-Formed Steel Structural Members.