Experimental and numerical study of the seismic behavior of cold-formed steel walls with diagonal braces

Abstract

In this paper, the seismic performance of cold-formed thin-walled steel walls with diagonal braces is studied by means of experiments and finite element analysis. In total, horizontal hysteretic loading tests were carried out on six full-scale cold-formed thin-walled steel walls. The influence of diagonal bracing, the screw spacing, wall panels and vertical loads on the seismic performance of the walls was investigated from the aspects of hysteretic curves, skeleton curves, the lateral stiffness degradation and the energy dissipation capacity. It was found that diagonal bracing could significantly improve the load-bearing capacity, stiffness, and energy dissipation capacity of the walls. However, the lateral resistance increased slightly because of premature buckling of the transverse braces at the connection between the diagonal and transverse braces. In addition, finite element models of the wall specimens were established by ABAQUS software and validated against the experimental data. A preliminary parametric study was also conducted to further examine the influence of essential parameters on the behavior of cold-formed steel walls with diagonal braces.