Shear Behavior Of Light-Guage Steel Stud Walls In Residential Buildings

The shear behavior of light-guage steel stud walls in residential system is presented here. The thesis consists of two parts. One is experimental study on light-guage shear walls and the other is finite element analysis.The heigths of specimens are 3 meter, and the widths of specimens are 2 meter or 4 meter respectively. Sizes of specimens are the same as those in practical engineering project. The lipped channel section is used as wall studs and its space is 500 millimeter. The wall sheathings are screwed on cold-formed steel studs, with 12mm gypsum board on one side and 9 mm oriented strand board (OSB) on another side. Both static and cyclic load tests are conducted for a same size specimen. The purpose is to find the effect on shear strength from different height-width ratio, and to get the shear resistance limit by static and cyclic loading. According to test results, the improvement suggestions for the wall details and design are presented in this paper.Experiments results showed that height-width ratio is not a main influencing factor on wall shear behaviors. The wall shear strength by cyclic loading is lower 10% than that of static loading. Test results also showed that the ductility coefficients of walls is equal to 3.08 -3.84, consuming coefficient E is about 1.0 and shear strength of wall specimens is about 12kN to 14 kN.In the paper, two kinds of finite element analysis are used for modeling static loading on the specimens through software ANSYS. One is complex model which has considered the wall practical construct details, and the other is simplified model. Load deflection curves and deformed shapes are got by finite element analysis. Through complex model, we also get Von-Mises stress cloud diagram of specimen components. ANSYS results are compared with test results. By compared data, we learned that the complex model imitates close to experiment results, and the shear strength by simplified model of finite element analysis is quite closer with test results.Through the test results and finite element analysis, we can draw a conclusion that the wall we tested can satisfy engineering application. These finite element analysis models proposed here also can be referred for theoretical analysis in the further,...