Power-Actuated Fasteners Connecting Cold-Formed Sheet Steels under Monotonic Tension Loading

Abstract

A total of 105 cross-tension tests were conducted to investigate the strength and behavior of power-actuated fastener (PAF) connections under quasi-static monotonic tensile loading. Three types of PAF were used to join sheets with thicknesses ranging from 0.75 to 4.00 mm to thicker plates with thicknesses ranging from 3.00 to 20.0 mm. All of the steel materials were high-strength cold-formed steel, except for the 20-mm-thick steel, which was hot-rolled steel. The studied parameters were the type and diameter of the fasteners and the thicknesses of the top and base steel materials. The majority of the specimens failed by pull-out failure, although some thinner sheets failed by transverse fracture of the top sheet. The test results reveal that PAF connections exhibit a high tensile capacity as long as a sufficient embedment length is provided. A model is proposed to evaluate the pull-out strength of PAF connections based on the base material strength and the average embedded diameter and embedment length of the fastener. The proposed model produces a mean of test-to-prediction ratio equal to 1.02 with a coefficient of variation ranging from 0.12 to 0.16. Reliability analyses were carried out and resulted in a resistance factor of 0.56–0.69 for Load and Resistance Factor Design.