A Simplified Method of Evaluating Lateral Strengths of Shear Wall Panels with Cold Formed Steel Framing

摘要

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. Martinez and Xu (2006) presented an analytical method to determine the lateral strength of the shear wall panel based on the analogy of designing eccentrically-loaded steel-bolted moment connections. The method takes into account the factors that affect the behaviour and the strength of the shear wall panel, such as material properties, geometrical dimensions and construction details. However, since an iterative process was adopted to determine the instantaneous center of panel rotation, the associated computational effort may hinder the efficiency of the method. A simplified method is proposed herein with no need of the iterative process. Lateral strengths of different sheathing wall panels obtained from the proposed method were compared with recent experimental investigations. The comparisons demonstrate that the results obtained by the proposed simplified method are in good agreement with those of the tests; therefore, the method is recommended for engineering practice.