Engineering researchers have provided the building blocks necessary for enabling performance-based design for cold-formed steel buildings, structures that have shown in shake-test experiments at the State University of New York at Buffalo to withstand seismic loading much better than previously expected.
Light, strong and easy to construct cold-formed steel (CFS) buildings are repetitively framed with light steel members and conform to well-defined seismic design codes.
Until this study, however, engineers and builders significantly underestimated the seismic strength of cold-formed steel structures. In fact, following the shake-table experiments at maximum-considered earthquake levels, little to no damage to the structural system was observed and the test specimen had no residual drift.
“There is a large difference between the idealized engineering models of the seismic lateral force resisting system and the superior performance of the full CFS building system,” said project leader Benjamin Schafer, professor and chair of the Department of Civil Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. “In other words, we’ve shown that CFS structures hold up extremely well under earthquake conditions and that it is possible to design CFS structures even more efficiently.”
Go To Johns Hopkins CFS-NEES Site