Cyclic Behavior of Corrugated Steel Shear Diaphragms with End Failure

Abstract

Light-gauge steel frames with load-bearing walls have become one option in robust structural systems for low-rise buildings. This structural system is often used in steel-framed houses and in typical load-bearing walls consisting of a light-gauge steel frame with plywood and gypsum boards fastened by self-drilling screws. These load-bearing walls dissipate seismic energy mainly through local bearing failure of the cladding boards at the screw connections, exhibiting significant slip and pinching behavior. This behavior tends to decrease the energy dissipation capacity of the bearing walls because of the small areas of the cyclic hysteresis loops. To improve the energy dissipation capacity, corrugated shear diaphragms failing in the end-failure mode were studied by conducting monotonic and cyclic loading tests of simple shear panels under ideal boundary conditions with pure shear loading. A full-scale load-bearing wall using corrugated steel sheets with end failure was also studied under cyclic loading to verify that the wall exhibits improved seismic performance. It was found that corrugated shear diaphragms failing in the end-failure mode could increase the seismic performance of steel-framed houses.