A new demountable light-gauge steel framed wall: Flexural behavior, thermal performance and life cycle assessment

Abstract

This paper presents a new demountable and modular light-gauge steel framed (DMLSF) wallboard, which is composed of two C-shaped steel frames, one insulation frame fabricated by timber, expanded polystyrene (EPS) board, orented strand board (OSB) and corresponding connections. The wall proposed in the study can be used in fabricated steel structure or temporary structure. The three-way adjustment joint is developed between the wall and the main structure to adjust the error, which can realize the convenient disassembly and reuse of wallboard. The flexural behavior of the wallboard with varying geometric parameters was investigated experimentally and the numerical model was established to explore the thermal performance of the wallboard. The results show that the failure mode of the wallboard is the local buckling of C-shaped cold-formed steel (CFS) stud, and the ultimate capacities of all the specimens exceed 5 kPa, which can be simply estimated according to the bending capacity of CFS stud. The heat transfer coefficients of tested specimens were between 0.27 and 0.31, and the insulation frame can effectively reduce the heat transfer coefficient. In addition, the life cycle assessment (LCA) method was adopted to study the environmental impact of the wallboard. The steel and EPS contribute the most to the environmental impact and the energy consumption of EPS is the most prominent. Moreover, the synthetical assessment index is proposed to evaluate the comprehensive performance of the wallboard. This paper is desired to provide guidance for the comprehensive performance optimization of demountable components.