Shake table test program of cold-formed steel in-plane partition walls

Abstract

Cold-formed steel (CFS) partition walls accounting for a significant portion of the nonstructural inventory have been vulnerable to seismic events. The seismic damage to CFS partition walls may occur at even low-intensity ground shaking leading to negligible structural damage and, in turn, results in significant losses. Regarding this, current seismic design provisions require that CFS partition walls on egress paths should be designed to accommodate interstory drifts of a structure. However, there is little information on the seismic performance of CFS partition walls built at low- and moderate seismicity regions although previous studies emphasize that they could be damaged at even low-intensity ground shaking. In order to evaluate the seismic performance of CFS partition walls constructed in low-and moderate seismicity regions, shake table test with CFS partition walls was carried out in this study. The interior partition wall specimens with different stud spacing were built according to the Korean common construction practices and were planned to suffer in-plane deformations. Physical and measured responses of the CFS partition walls observed during the shake table test demonstrated that decreasing the stud spacing can improve the seismic performance of CFS partition walls subjected to in-plane deformation. From the statistical investigation characterizing the damage states of the CFS partition walls and their correlation with engineering quantities, the construction practice of CFS partition walls built in low- and moderate seismicity regions might not provide acceptable seismic performance for life safety even though the structure installing them was assumed to be design to meet the codified limitation related to its engineering quantity.