- Page 23 of 50 - News, Notes and Discussion from the Simpson Strong-Tie Engineering Department

Revisiting Stainless-Steel Nail Calculations . . . .

Those of you who have been following the Simpson Strong-Tie SE Blog for a while may recall our 2013 blog post on the withdrawal resistance of stainless-steel nails. There have been several developments relating to that subject since that blog was posted, and we want to help you catch up.Continue Reading

The Cold-Formed Steel Construction Catalog is HOT off the press!

The SE Blog is taking some time off for the 4th of July holiday this week. However, we’ve just released the 2017 edition of our Connectors for Cold-Formed Steel Construction catalog – order a hard copy to be mailed to your office or download a PDF copy and start using it today!

Connectors For Cold-Formed Steel Construction

The C-CF-2017 is a 308-page catalog including specifications, load tables and installation illustrations for our cold-formed steel connectors and clips, helping you easily specify and install in commercial curtain-wall, mid-rise and residential construction.

How Heat Treating Helps Concrete Anchoring Products Meet Tougher Load Demands

There’s a saying in Chicago, “If you don’t like the weather, just wait fifteen minutes.” That’s especially true in the spring, when temperatures can easily vary by over 50° from one day to the next. As the temperature plunges into the blustery 30s one evening following a sunny high in the 80s, I throw my jacket on over my T-shirt, and I’m reminded that large swings in temperature tend to bring about changes in behavior as well. This isn’t true just with people, but with many materials as well, and it brings to mind a thermal process called heat treating. This is a process that is used on some concrete anchoring products in order to make them stronger and more durable. You may have heard of this process without fully understanding what it is or why it’s useful. In this post, I will try to scratch the surface of the topic with a very basic overview of how heat treating is used to improve the performance of concrete anchors.Continue Reading

Revisiting Spanning the Gap

Three years ago, we created this blog post based on a technical support question we often receive about allowable fastener loads for ledgers to wood framing over gypsum board. Given that this is still a frequent question and a relevant topic, we decided to revisit the post and update it.

Drywall. Wall board. Sheetrock. Sackett Board? A product called Sackett Board was invented in the 1890s, which was made by plastering within wool felt paper. United States Gypsum Corporation refined Sackett Board for several years until 1916, when they developed a new method of producing boards with a single layer of plaster and paper. This innovation was eventually branded SHEETROCK®. More details about the history of USG can be found here.

No matter what you call it, gypsum board is found in almost every type of construction. Architects use it for sound and fire ratings, while structural engineers need to account for its weight in our load calculations. A common technical support question we receive is for allowable fastener loads for ledgers to wood framing over gypsum board.

One method to evaluate a fastener spanning across gypsum board is to treat the gypsum material as an air gap. Technical Report 12, General Dowel Equations for Calculating Lateral Connection Values, is published by the American Wood Council.

TR12 has yield limit equations that allow a designer to account for a gap between the main member and side member of a connection. With a gap of zero (g=0), the TR12 equations provide the same results as the NDS yield limit equations.

Technical Report 12 Yield Limit Equations[1] — Technical Report 12 Yield Limit Equations

The equations are fairly complex, but it should be intuitive that the calculated fastener capacity decreases with increasing gap. Engineers are often surprised to see a 40, 50, even 60% drop in fastener capacity with one layer of 5/8” gypsum board. So what else can you do?

Testing, of course! In So, What’s Behind a Screw’s Allowable Load? I discussed the methods used to load rate a proprietary fastener such as the Simpson Strong-Tie® Strong-Drive® SDS or SDW screws. To recap, ICC-ES Acceptance Criteria for Alternate Dowel Type Fasteners, AC233, allows you to calculate and do verification tests, or load rate based on testing alone. We develop our allowable loads primarily by testing, as the performance enhancing features and material optimizations in our fasteners are not addressed by NDS equations.

So to determine the performance of a fastener installed through gypsum board, we tested the fastener through gypsum board. This is easier to do if you happen to have a test lab with a lot of wood and fasteners in it. We did have to run down to the local hardware store to pick up gypsum board for the testing.

SDWS-Over-2-Layer-Gypboard-Failure — SDWS Over 2 Layer Gypboard Failure

A full set of allowable loads for Strong-Drive SDWH and SDWS are available on strongtie.com. The information is given as single fastener shear values for engineered design, and also screw spacing tables for common ledger configurations. As much fun as writing spreadsheets to do the Technical Report 12 calculations is, having tabulated values based on testing is much easier.

Fastening Systems

In the fastener marketplace, Simpson Strong-Tie stands apart from the rest. Quality and reliability is our top priority.

How Are Deck-Drive™ DWP Screws Load-Rated?

Experiential learning — has it happened to you? Certainly it has, because experiential learning is learning derived from experience. It happens in everyday life, in engineering and in product development, too. For example, experience has taught us that after a product is launched, our customers will find applications for the product that were never expected or listed in the product brief. Also, experience has shown us that larger fasteners tend to be placed in applications that have greater structural and safety demands.

When the larger Deck-Drive™ DWP screws were manufactured, we decided that they should be marketed as “load-rated” screws because they were big enough to support physically large parts and would be expected to provide structural load resistance.

So what is a “load-rated” screw? To Simpson Strong-Tie, a load-rated screw is a threaded fastener that has controlled dimensions and physical properties, as well as validated connection properties. Load-rated fasteners are also subject to the same quality inspection that would occur if they were undergoing an evaluation report.

Design More with Our New Steel Deck Diaphragm Calculator App!

People are always innovating new things! There are always new tools, software, apps or, more recently, digital assistants to help us organize our life! Here’s something I want to share with you. Recently my family bought Google Home, and both my boys (ages 8 and 5) are constantly exploring it and testing its capabilities: “Hey, Google, play this music” or “Hey, Google, what time is it?” or “Hey, Google, repeat ‘Nathan is bad.’” While Google Home helps them with the former requests, it simply says, “I am still learning,” in response to commands like “repeat ‘Nathan is bad.’” It’s funny to see them experiment and come up with creative ideas to use the tool. Many of us appreciate tools that help us be more organized or increase our efficiency or that are simply fun to use. Our new revised diaphragm calculator for designing metal decks is our attempt to help the engineering community get more done in less time.

So What Are the Updates and Revisions?

We have updated our design software to design per Canadian Standards like CSA136 and to design per Limit States Design. The app is so easy to use that you can design a steel deck diaphragm in minutes! The software designs steel decks for both shear and uplift forces acting on the deck and provides tables with diaphragm shear capacities for a given deck span using Simpson Strong-Tie deck fasteners that conform to Canadian codes and standards. These fasteners have an evaluation report, IAPMO UES ER-326, are recognized in SDI (Steel Deck Institute) DDM03 Appendix VII and IX and the CSSBI (Canadian Sheet Steel Building Institute) Design Manual and have FM approvals.

Overview of the App

When you open our diaphragm design software, Steel Deck Diaphragm Calculator, there is an option to “Select your Country.” You can choose to design for US standards, in which case you select the USA option, or you can select Canada Imperial or Canada Metric, which are new additions. The app has three sections: (1) Optimized Solutions, (2) Diaphragm Capacity Tables and (3) Other Diaphragm Tables. All three options are available for the USA option. The Optimized Solutions help you to design a deck for any given shear and uplift. You can refer to our previous blog, Design Examples for Steel Deck Diaphragm Calculator Web App, for some examples on how to design steel decks using the Optimized Solutions selection. Diaphragm Capacity Tables are available to the USA and both Canada selections. Other Diaphragm Tables is available only to the USA selection.

Metal Deck Diaphragm Design Using Limit States Design (LSD)

When you select Canada for the country, you will have the option to select Diaphragm Capacity Tables as shown in the screen shot below. You can generate diaphragm shear tables by entering:

Steel Deck Information: In this section, you select the type of the deck, the design method, the load type you would like the tables to be generated in and the deck thickness. You can enter uplift if you would like to design the deck for combined shear and tension, or leave the net uplift as zero if you are generating shear-only tables.
Quik Drive Fastener Information: In this section, you input information about the structural and side-lap fasteners.

Click the Calculate button to generate the tables.

A PDF copy of the tables can be generated in either English or French.

This easy-to-use design software can be used by the designers, specifiers or erectors to generate the tables required. More information about our X series of screws (including XL and XM), tools and the required industry approvals for designing the profiled deck diaphragms can be found on our website at strongtie.com.

Please try out the app and let us know your comments and feedback so we can continue to improve our software to better serve your needs!

4 Common FRP Myths and Misconceptions: The Stuff Not Everyone Talks About

The primary benefit of fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) systems as compared with traditional retrofit methods is that significant flexural, axial or shear strength gains can be realized using an easy-to-apply composite that does not add significant weight or section to the structure. Many times it is the most economical choice given the reduced preparation and labor costs and may be installed without taking the structure out of service. However, it is important to make sure the composite is properly designed following industry standards in order to ensure that it is the right product for the application.

To provide you with a better understanding of the topic, it’s important to dispel some common myths and misconceptions that you might hear about FRP:

Introduction to the Site-Built Shearwall Designer Web Application

Wood shearwalls are typically used as a lateral-force-resisting system to counter the effects of lateral loads. Wood shearwalls need to be designed for shear forces (using sheathing and nailing), overturning (using holdowns), sliding (using anchorage to concrete) and drift, to list some of the main dangers. The Simpson Site-Built Shearwall Designer (SBSD) web app is a quick and easy tool to design a wood shearwall based on demand load, wall geometry and design parameters.Continue Reading

Why You Should Specify Stainless-Steel Screw Anchors When Designing for Corrosive Environments

I was driving under a concrete bridge one nice clear day in Chicago, and I happened to look up to see rusted rebar exposed below a concrete bridge. My beautiful wife, who is not a structural engineer, turned to me and asked, “What happened to that bridge?” I explained that there are many reasons why spalling occurs below a bridge. One common reason is the expansion of steel when it rusts or corrodes.