Finite element analysis of the lateral capacity of cold-formed steel shear walls after fire exposure

Published

December 9, 2021

Author(s)

Shuna Ni, Xia Yan, Matthew Hoehler, Thomas Gernay

Abstract

Cold-formed-steel construction frequently relies on strap-braced, cold-formed-steel framed walls as the lateral-force resisting system. While the behavior of these walls has been studied during fire and under lateral loading separately, the influence of multi-hazard interactions – and particularly the effect of fire damage on walls' subsequent lateral load resistance – remains poorly understood. This paper presents a simulation procedure to analyze the thermal and structural response of cold-formed-steel walls when subjected sequentially to fire and lateral load, which is validated against full-scale experiments. The results indicate that the numerical model can capture the post-fire response of cold-formed steel walls, including lateral strength, stiffness, and ductile failure. The lateral behavior of the walls was found to depend primarily on the maximum temperature reached in the cold-formed steel members, and their resulting residual material properties. Then, the validated simulation procedure was used to estimate the residual lateral performance of a strap-braced wall after exposure to various high temperatures. For the residual strength of the cold-formed steel material, data collected from the literature was combined with new test data from the authors to study the effect of variability in material post-fire strength on the wall's response. The outcomes of this research will help engineers to determine the post-fire performance of a wall as a function of the severity of the fire event.

Proceedings Title

Proceedings of the 12th Asia-Oceania Symposium on Fire Science and Technology

Conference Dates

December 7-9, 2021

Conference Location

Brisbane, AU

Conference Title

AOSFST 2021 – 12th Asia-Oceania Symposium on Fire Science and Technology

Pub Type

Conferences

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.14264/0825e72

Local Download

Keywords

Shear walls, Cold-formed steel, Fire, Strap bracing, Lateral resistance, Numerical modelling

Citation

Ni, S. , Yan, X. , Hoehler, M. and Gernay, T. (2021), Finite element analysis of the lateral capacity of cold-formed steel shear walls after fire exposure, Proceedings of the 12th Asia-Oceania Symposium on Fire Science and Technology, Brisbane, AU, [online], https://doi.org/10.14264/0825e72, https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=933726 (Accessed October 2, 2025)