Engineers spend much of their career designing and detailing main structural members which are exposed to significant structural loads. An experienced engineer will often master this type of design and excel at detailing an efficient building system. However, these same savvy engineers are sometimes left scratching their heads when tasked with providing a clean and simple design for attaching components such as cabinets, shelves or handrails to interior finish. Simpson Strong-Tie’s versatile new WBAC Wood Backing Steel Connector provides the engineer with a fully tested design solution that efficiently and easily attaches wood backing members for heavy wall hangings.
Tag: cold-formed steel
CFS Designer™ v2.5 Makes Cold-Formed Steel Design Easier Than Ever
With the use of engineering software tools, structural engineers can design buildings faster and more efficiently than ever before. In this blog post, Clifton Melcher, P.E., a senior project manager for cold-formed steel connectors, discusses the various enhancements included in version 2.5 of Simpson Strong-Tie® CFS Designer™ software.
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NASCC 2018: Debuting Our Newest Yield Link Connection
This year the NASCC (North American Steel Construction Conference) will be in Baltimore, Maryland. The conference is the annual educational and networking event for the structural steel industry, which attracts attendees and exhibitors from all over the world. With more than 130 sessions this year, the conference will provide attendees the opportunity to learn the latest in research, design, technology and best practice in the steel industry.
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Beat Building Drift with the New DSSCB Drift Strut Slide Connector from Simpson Strong-Tie
Structural engineers concerned with building envelopes are always looking for better solutions that help isolate the cladding from the primary structure in conditions where large building drift is a concern. Simpson Strong-Tie has an answer with a unique and innovative solution, the new DSSCB (drift strut sliding clip bypass).
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Q&A About CFS Designer™ Software
I recently had the pleasure of presenting a webinar with Rob Madsen, PE, of Devco Engineering on our CFS Designer software, “Increase Productivity in Your Cold-Formed Steel Design Projects.” The webinar took place on September 28, and a recording is available online on our training website for anyone who wasn’t able to join us. Viewing the recording (and completing the associated test) qualifies for continuing education units and professional development hours. The webinar covers how to use the CFS Designer software to design complex loading conditions for beams, wall studs, walls with openings, and stacked walls using cold-formed steel studs, tracks, built-up sections, and even custom shapes. We received some excellent questions during the webinar, but due to time constraints were only able to answer a few during the live webinar. Rob and I did get a chance to answer all the questions in a Q&A document from which I’d like to share some excerpts. The complete Q&A webinar list can be accessed here, or through the online recording.
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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.
Decrypting Cold-Formed Steel Connection Design
As published in STRUCTURE magazine, September 2016. Written by Randy Daudet, P.E., S.E., Product Manager at Simpson Strong-Tie. Re-posted with permission.
One of the world’s greatest unsolved mysteries of our time lies in a courtyard outside of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) headquarters in Langley, Virginia. It’s a sculpture called Kryptos, and although it’s been partially solved, it contains an inscription that has puzzled the most renowned cryptanalysts since being erected in 1990. Meanwhile, in another part of the DC Beltway about 15 miles to the southeast, another great mystery is being deciphered at the American and Iron Institute (AISI) headquarters.Continue Reading
Cold-Formed Steel Curtain-Wall Systems
In August 2012, Simpson Strong-Tie launched a comprehensive, innovative solution for curtain-wall framing. Our lead engineer for developing our line of connectors for curtain-wall construction explains the purpose of the curtain wall with the illustrations below.
First, curtain walls are not what you put up if you shared a room with your brother and sister when you were growing up. When I first learned about the use of cold-formed steel curtain walls, I laughed and thought: “Gosh, how useful this would be for someone growing up with 5 siblings in one bedroom!” I have always enjoyed the sense of humor that our engineers use to help explain technical topics.
Curtain walls can be described as exterior building walls with the primary purpose of protecting the interior building against the exterior weather and natural phenomena such as sun exposure, temperature changes, earthquakes, rain and wind.
To put it in structural terms, a curtain-wall system consists of non-load-bearing exterior walls that must still carry their own weight. Curtain walls are not part of the primary structural framing for the building, but they typically rely on the primary structural framing for support. Additionally, curtain walls receive wind and seismic loads and transfer these forces to the primary building structure.
Types of Curtain Walls
Glass and cladding curtain walls make up two basic types of curtain-wall systems. Glass curtain-wall systems are usually designed using aluminum-framed walls with in-fills of glass. The cladding curtain wall is a system with back-up framing that is covered in some type of cladding material. The cladding curtain-wall system is the type in which Simpson Strong-Tie products can be used.
The back-up framing is the structural element of the curtain-wall system. It is typically constructed with cold-formed steel studs ranging from 31/2″ to 8″ deep, in 33 mil (20 ga.) to 97 mil (12 ga.) steel thicknesses. The framing studs are typically spaced at 16″or 24″ on center. There are many different types of cladding materials. They include, but are not limited to, exterior insulation finish systems (EIFS), glass-fiber-reinforced concrete (GFRC), bricks, metal panels and stone panels.
Deflection
One essential function of the curtain wall is to allow for relative movement between the curtain-wall system and the main building structure. At first, it was not obvious to me why making this allowance was necessary, but our product development team creatively explained some of the reasons why this is an important must-have feature for curtain walls.
First, the primary building will move up and down as it is loaded and unloaded by the live-load occupancy, similar to beam live-load deflections.
Second, the structure sways and has torsional displacement due to movement from lateral wind or seismic loads.
Third, concrete structures typically encounter creep and shrinkage, and there may be foundation differential settlement or soil compression from high-gravity loads.
Lastly, the temperature differential may cause the building elements to expand and contract, which, again, can result in relative movement between structural elements. This is similar to a bridge’s steel plate expansion joint system.
And if you are a curious designer like me, you probably wonder why the relative vertical moment is so significant in engineering design.
One key reason is to ensure that the curtain walls do not collect gravity loads from the building, so as to prevent overloading and possible failure of the stud framing. In addition, a well-designed curtain-wall system needs to retain the primary structural load path as intended by the building designer.
The other reason is to protect the cladding of the building. If you remember earlier, the cladding material may be marble, granite or natural stones that are often very expensive and heavy. In some cases, the cladding can be one of the most expensive systems in a building. And there are times when it’s much more cost-effective to design for relative movement than it is to over-design structural framing to address the stringent deflection requirements.
Construction Type
Bypass framing is a term that is often used in curtain-wall construction. In this system, the metal studs bypass the floor and hang off the outside edges of the building. You can see from the illustration how the studs run past, or bypass, the edge of the slab. In this case, the studs are supported vertically on the foundation at the bottom, and then run continuously past multiple floor levels.
In steel construction, concrete fill over metal deck is typically constructed with a heavy-gauge bent plate or structural angle. Connectors can attach directly to the steel angle or the web of an edge beam.
It may seem that this type of construction is too complex and requires great efforts to detail the many connections needed to hang the curtain wall off the outside of the building. So what are the compelling reasons to choose bypass framing construction?
Bypass framing can accommodate flexibility for the architect. In another words, the bypass configuration easily allows architects to create reveals, set-backs and other architectural features. Plus, there are fewer joints to detail for movement when stud length can run continuously for several floors. Another benefit is that the exterior finish can also be installed on a curtain-wall system with a tighter tolerance than the edge of the structure.
One other special bypass framing type is known as ribbon window or spandrel framing. Ribbon windows are a series of windows set side by side to form a continuous band horizontally across a façade. The vertical deflection for this type of bypass framing is typically accommodated at the window head. This type of bypass usually works well for panelized construction.
Another common curtain-wall system is infill framing, where the studs run from the top of one floor to the underside of the floor above. Sometimes it’s a challenge to attach bypass framing to the edge of thin concrete slabs. In the following illustration, deflection is designed at the top track of wall panels.
In Part 2 of this blog post series, I will provide more details about how we have innovated products to be used for this application, plus a more comprehensive post about the products we offer and how they are typically used.
In the meantime, you can check out our product offering. Our recent SC slide-clip and FC fixed-clip connectors are designed for high-seismic areas.
I would like to invite you to comment and provide feedback on this topic and tell us whether you’ve had any experience working with a Designer on a CFS curtain-wall project. If you are a Designer who specializes in this discipline, how are you designing curtain-wall systems for seismic forces?
Get There Quicker! How CFS Designer Can Help Speed Up Your Design Process
Did you know that Simpson Strong-Tie is celebrating its 60th birthday this year? We started out with one punch press and the ability to bend light-gauge steel. Then, one Sunday evening in the summer of 1956, Barclay Simpson’s doorbell rang and a request for our first joist hanger led us into the wood connector business. Since then, we’ve continued to grow that business by focusing on our engineering, research and development efforts. Some might say that nowadays we’re an engineering company that also happens to manufacture products, as evidenced by our focus on developing technology tools over the past few years such as web calculators, an updated website and design software. Our focus on technology, however, is really another aspect of our continued commitment to excellence in manufacturing and our application of the tenets of lean manufacturing.
Many of you may already be familiar with the idea of lean manufacturing made famous by Toyota in the early 2000s, along with the principles of continual improvement and respect for people. The concept of continual improvement is based on the idea that you can always make small changes to improve your processes and products. Although they were established in a manufacturing setting, these ideals ring very true for engineering as well; eliminate steps in your design process that don’t add any value to the final project and always be on the lookout for tools or techniques that can speed up your process. Thinking lean isn’t about cutting corners to get your result faster, it’s about mindfully getting rid of the steps that aren’t helping you and finding better ways of doing everyday tasks.
As structural engineers, we can find ourselves working on a variety of projects that lead us to perform repetitive calculations to check different conditions, such as varying parapet heights on the exterior of a building, or we may find ourselves working with an unfamiliar material, such as light-gauge or cold-formed steel (CFS), where we have to take some time away from design to review reference materials such as AISI S200-12 North American Standard for Cold-Formed Steel Framing. Wouldn’t it be great if there were a design tool that could help you complete your light-gauge projects more quickly, in complete compliance with current building codes?
It turns out that Simpson Strong-Tie offers a design tool called CFS Designer™ to help structural engineers improve their project design flow. This program gives engineers the ability to design light-gauge stud and track members with complex beam loading and span conditions according to building code specifications. What does that actually mean, though? Allow me to illustrate with an example of a design project.
Let’s say you’re designing a building and part of your scope is the exterior wall framing, or “skin” of the building. You probably get sent some architectural plans that look something like this:
The architectural elevations will have wall section marks indicated for different framing situations. Two sample wall sections are shown in Figure 2.
This building has several different wall section types that include door and window locations, varying parapet heights, diverse finish materials that need to meet different deflection criteria, and different connection points back to the base building. The traditional design calculation that you would need to run for one wall section might begin with a loading diagram similar to Figure 3 below.
Once you have your loading diagram generated, you would need to use reference load tables or a computer analysis program to solve for the axial and moment demands, the reactions at the pinned supports, and the member deflections.
After you determine the demand loads, you would then need to select a CFS member with sufficient properties, and you may need to iterate a few times to find a solution that meets the load and deflection parameters. After you’ve selected a member with the right width, gauge and steel strength, you’ll need to select an angle clip that can handle the demand loads, as well as fasteners to connect the clip to the CFS stud and to the base building. You would also need to also check the member design to ensure that it complies with bridging or bracing requirements per AISI. Then, after all that, you’d have to repeat the process again for all of the wall section types for your project.
Just writing out that whole process took some time, and you can imagine that actually running the calculations takes quite a bit longer. I think we can all agree that the design process we’ve outlined is time-consuming, and here’s where using CFS Designer™ to streamline your design process can really help.
CFS Designer is a structural engineering design program that can automate many of the manual steps that are required in the design process. It has an easy-to-understand graphical user interface that allows you to input your project parameters within a variety of design modules from walls and beams, jambs and headers, X-brace walls, shearwalls, floor joists, and roof rafters. The program also enables the design of single stud or track members, built-up box-sections, back-to-back sections, and nested stud or track sections. Figure 5 shows an example of how you would input the same stud we looked at before into the program.
The program will generate the loading diagrams and complete calculation package for all of these different situations. And along with checking the member properties and deflection limits, CFS Designer will also check bridging and bracing requirements and provide connector solutions for the studs using tested and code-listed Simpson Strong-Tie products. Figure 6 shows an example of the summary output you would receive.
One unique part of the output is toward the center of the second page, under the heading “Simpson Strong-Tie Connectors.” This section summarizes the tension and compression loads at each reaction point and then shows a connector solution (such as the SCB45.5) along with the number of screws to the stud and the number of #12 sheet-metal screws to anchor back to the base building. Simpson Strong-Tie has developed and tested a full array of connectors specifically for CFS curtain-wall construction as well as for interior tenant improvement framing, which allows designers to select a connection clip straight out of a catalog without needing to calculate their own designs per the code. It’s just another way we’re helping you to get a little leaner!
The last part of the output shown in Figure 6 is titled “Simpson Strong-Tie Wall Stud Bridging Connectors.” It checks the bridging and bracing requirements per AISI S100 and selects a SUBH bridging connector, an innovative bridging solution developed by Simpson Strong-Tie that snaps into place and achieves design loads while only requiring one #10 screw to connect for 75% of applications.
You can download a free trial of CFS Designer™ and give it a test drive to see how much time it can save you on a design project. The trial version has almost full functionality, with the exception of not being able to print the output sheets. You can see purchasing information online, and you should always feel free to contact your local Simpson Strong-Tie engineering department with any questions you may have. I hope you are able to take advantage of this great tool to further improve your everyday design processes. We will be sure to keep you updated on our latest technology tools that help speed up the design process. If you’re using CFS Designer, we’d like to hear your thoughts about the program. Please share them in the comments below.
Specifying Self-Drilling Screws: “Standard” vs. “Engineered”
In my past life as a Design Engineer, when specifying a screw the size of the screw was the key feature that I considered. In my mind, a #10 screw performed better than #8, and a #12 was better than #10 and all #10 screws were the same. But that is not always true. Just as a shoe size or a dress size may not be exactly the same for all brands, a screw of the same size from different manufacturers may perform differently. The head type, head design, thread design (fine, coarse, thread angle, pitch), thread type (like box threads, buttress threads, unified, square) and drill point type (like #1, #3, #5 drill point) can influence the performance of a screw. When innovatively designed, a #10 engineered screw can meet or exceed the performance of a #12 or #14 screw in loads and drill time and could result in cost savings. You can use fewer screws, which would mean labor savings. For example, our newly designed XU34B1016 screw, which is a #10 screw with 16 threads per inch, a hex washer head and a #1 drill point, that performs better than a #14 standard screw in lighter gauge steels.
What Are Self-Drilling Tapping Screws?
Self-drilling tapping screws, or self-drilling screws, as the name implies, drill their own hole, eliminating the need for predrilling, and form or cut internal mating threads. They are relatively fast to instal compared to bolts or welds. Unlike pins, they do not require a thick support material to be used. They can be used in very thin steel, such as 26 gauge, up to steel that is ½” thick. Self-drilling screws may be a perfect choice for most applications involving cold-formed steel (CFS). They are most commonly used for CFS connections: either attaching CFS to CFS, wood to CFS or CFS to wood. They are a logical choice when the other side of the connection or material is not accessible.
Most self-drilling screws are made of steel wire that meets the specification of ASTM A510 minimum grade 1018 material as specified in ASTM C1513 standard. Self-drilling screws are heat treated to case harden then so that they meet the hardness, ductility, torsional strength and drill drive requirements as specified in ASTM C1513 standard. ASTM C1513 refers to SAE J78 for the dimensional and performance requirements of self-drilling screws.
Screw Selection
While selecting the screw, you need to figure out the head type that works for the application. For example, a flat-head screw would be a good choice for wood-to-steel applications, but for steel-to-steel applications, a hex head or a pan head may be a better choice. Similarly, the length of the screw should be sufficient to fasten the members of the connection together. According to Section D1.3 of AISI S200, the screw should be at least equal in length to the total thickness of the material including gaps with a minimum of three exposed threads. The length of the drill point is another important feature to consider. It should be long enough to drill through the entire thickness of the material before engaging the threads. This is because thread forming occurs with fewer revolutions than the drilling process. if the drill point length is not long enough, the screw threads can engage the connection material and the screw can bind and break.
Some drill points also have “wings” to drill a hole in the material that is larger in diameter than the threaded shank. Screws with this kind of point are mainly used for wood-to-steel applications. The blog post by Jeff Ellis titled “Wings or No Wings” provides some useful insights for screws with wings when used in shearwall applications.
The Test Standards and Evaluation Criteria for Standard and Engineered Screws
Per Section D1 of AISI S200, screws used for steel-to-steel connections or sheathing-to-steel connections shall be in compliance with ASTM C1513 or an approved design or design standard.
For ASTM C1513–compliant screws (per AISI S100), Section E4 provides equations to calculate shear, pullout and pullover of screws used in steel-to-steel connections. It also provides safety and resistance factors for calculating allowable strength or design strength. These equations are based on the results of tests done worldwide and the many different types of screws used in the tests. As a result, these equations seem to have a great degree of conservatism.
As discussed earlier, many factors, such as the head type and washer diameter, thread profile, drill point type and length, installation torque and the installation method affect or influence the performance of a screw. In order to qualify the screws as ASTM C1513–compliant or better performing, manufacturers need to have their screws evaluated per Acceptance criteria for Tapping Screw Fasteners AC118 developed by International Code Council – Evaluation Service. The criteria have different requirements depending on whether the intention is to qualify as standard screws or proprietary screws. For proprietary screws, connection shear, pullout and pullover tests are performed in accordance with the AISI S905 test method. The shear strength and tensile strength of the screw itself are evaluated per test standard AISI S904. The safety and resistance factors are calculated in accordance with Section F of AISI S100. The pictures below are some test set-ups per AISI S905 and AISI S904 test procedures.
Another important consideration is corrosion resistance. AC118 has a requirement for testing the fasteners for corrosion resistance in accordance with ASTM B117 for a minimum of 12 hours. The screws tested shall not show any white rust after 3 hours or any red rust after 12 hours of the test. At the same time, it is important to keep in mind that hardened screws are prone to hydrogen embrittlement and are not recommended for exterior or wet condition applications. Also, these screws are not recommended for use with dissimilar metals. If self-drilling screws are to be used in exterior environments, the screws need to be selectively heat treated to keep the core and surface hardness in a range that reduces the susceptibility to hydrogen embrittlement. Other fastener options for exterior environments are stainless-steel screws.
This table shows are some of our screw offerings for CFS applications. Our stainless-screw options can be found in Fastening Systems Catalog (C-F-14) or at www.strongtie.com.
What are the screws that you most commonly specify? Share your screw preferences and your ideas on self-drilling screws in your comments below.