Blast Testing of Cold-Formed Steel-Stud Wall Panels

Abstract

Cold-formed steel-stud walls have been utilized as an attractive option for blast-resistant design due to the combination of high strength and ductility that enable them to absorb and dissipate blast energy through large deformation kinematics. However, achieving the available ductility of the steel studs requires special attention to the stud-to-track connection details, which has remained an active area of research and development. While much of the existing literature has described specialized ideal boundaries to ensure that the full tensile membrane response of the studs would be achieved prior to connection failure, the research reported in this paper examines the blast performance of cold-formed steel-stud walls with commercially available connections and bridging. Experimental results from a series of three open-arena blast tests of identical cold-formed steel-stud wall panels are presented. Distortional buckling of the studs around unstiffened punchouts in the web as well as web crippling adjacent to the screwed stud-to-track connection are highlighted in this paper. The results from the research reported in this paper are particularly important since several of these modes of failure have not been investigated in static load tests designed to develop resistance functions for cold-formed steel walls.