Seismic design rules for lightweight steel shear walls with steel sheet sheathing in the 2nd-generation Eurocodes

The current structural European codes for seismic design EN1998-1 do not provide design criteria for cold formed steel (CFS) shear walls with steel sheet sheathing, limiting their use as a lateral force resisting system (LFRS) in lightweight steel (LWS) buildings. To overcome this lack of guidelines, a specific study has been carried out at the University of Naples “Federico II”. The main goals of the study are the validation/calibration of the Effective strip method (ESM) by Yanagi & Yu [26] and the definition of seismic design parameters according to the European format. The main results show that ESM gives a reliable prediction if the shear resistance of screw connections is evaluated based on equations from AISI S100 [1]. A safety factor for resistance equal to 1.25 can be used for the evaluation of the design wall resistance according to Limit state design (LSD) and an overstrength (expected resistance) factor equal to 1.4 can be adopted for the design of non-ductile components according to capacity design