Design method for light-gauge steel shear walls sheathed with flat steel plates

Sheathed Light-Gauge Steel (LGS) shear walls are often used in structures as load bearing elements against wind and earthquake actions. The design of walls is often complicated by the lack of analytical methods for the evaluation of the strength and rigidity. Design by testing is a possibility if large numbers of identical walls are used; but in the usual case designers are limited by economic consideration to use configurations which were already tested. These limitations greatly reduce the potential of using LGS shear walls in practical applications. In this paper an analytical design procedure is presented for LGS shear walls sheathed with flat thin steel plates. The procedure, developed for the evaluation of the shear strength and rigidity of the walls, takes into account the fixing of the steel plate to the skeleton. The method is validated using both Finite Element Modelling (FEM) and experiments; comparisons show good accuracy when it comes to the evaluation of strength, but not satisfactory for the rigidity.