Study on the load-carrying capacity of an innovative cold-formed steel floor system

Abstract

To account for the higher structural ductility requirement and higher load-bearing capacity and stability requirements of floor-to-wall connections of mid-rise cold-formed steel (CFS) structures, an innovative CFS floor system with gridded beams and filler blocks (BB-based CFS floor system, where BB stands for “beams” and “blocks”, respectively) was first proposed. Then, experimental and refined numerical simulation studies were performed to investigate the flexural behaviour of the floor system. Afterwards, a simplified calculation method of the load-carrying capacity of the floor system was deduced based on its mechanical mechanism. The results show that (1) the deformation of the floorboard-to-beam screw connections and the relative buckling of the compression beam flange and adjacent web are the primary reasons for the nonlinear load-deflection relationship and bending failure of the floor system. (2) Compared with the existing CFS composite floor systems, the combination effect of each component in the BB-based CFS floor system prevented the beams from unstable failure after losing the restraint of floorboards, thereby effectively improving the load-carrying capacity and nondeformability of the floor system. (3) After decomposing the BB-based CFS floor system into composite floor beams, the load-carrying capacities of the floor system can be determined simply according to the cumulative flexural bearing capacities of these composite floor beams based on plasticity theory, the relative errors between the deduced load-carrying capacities and the test results and simulated results of different BB-based CFS floor systems are within 10%, and the calculated results are relatively safe.