Hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes – it seems almost every week a deadly natural disaster is reported in the news. Now researchers at the University of North Texas are working to help create walls, made of cold-formed steel, that will stand up to those disasters, with hopes of saving homes and lives.
Lan has been testing new shear walls the research team made out of cold-form steel to determine if they will better stand up to the extreme winds of hurricanes and tornadoes and the extreme movement caused by earthquakes.”
“I have found the shear wall that we have been working on has a greater shear strength than most of the similar walls that are currently accepted in building codes,” said Lan. “I recently was able to design and build a demo cold-formed steel structure by applying this new shear wall. I would say it is a good start for the exploration of the shear wall application.”