Multi-level simulation studies on seismic performance evaluation of steel-sheathed cold-formed steel framing shear walls

Abstract

Cold-formed steel (CFS) framing shear walls has been widely used as the lateral force resisting system of light-weight steel structures. While the behaviors of walls have been numerically studied, there is a need to develop more convenient and efficient modeling strategies. In this paper, a simulation framework consisting of component-level to system-level analysis for the seismic evaluation of steel-sheathed CFS walls was proposed by using OpenSees software. Based on the improved fastener-based method, refined numerical models were developed and validated against tests of steel sheathed CFS shear walls. Self-drilling screw connection tests were conducted to characterize the nonlinear properties of the member-to-sheathing connections as inputs in the models. Then, a set of structural archetypes were systematically analyzed by nonlinear static and incremental dynamic analysis in accordance with FEMA P695. The results showed that the proposed simulation framework could well capture the response of CFS walls and evaluate the seismic performance of structural system. The post-peak behavior of wall had a significant impact on the collapse resistance of the structure. The seismic response modification coefficient value was suggested (R = 4.25) for the high-performance steel-sheathed CFS framing shear walls studied in this paper.