Axial Resistance of Short Built-up Cold-Formed Steel Columns: Effect of Lacing Slenderness

Abstract

Cold-formed steel (CFS) construction has become popular in the recent decades mainly due to their favorable features like higher yield strength, easy fabrication/handling, faster cost-effective construction, etc. Built-up members are often used as columns in structures with demands to resist large axial forces. Past studies have mainly stressed on evaluating the performance of battened CFS columns. Therefore, there is a need to examine the behavior of built-up laced CFS columns under the axial loading conditions. This study stresses on the numerical investigation of the influence of lacing element slenderness on the compression capacity of built-up CFS columns. Cold-formed steel columns consisting of four angle sections were connected by single lacing configuration. Test results from literature were used to calibrate the nonlinear finite element model developed. The design strengths predicted by North American Standards (AISI S-100) are calculated and compared with the test results.