Design of light-gauge steel shear walls sheathed with thin steel plates

A problem related to the design of sheathed light-gauge steel walls for earthquake or wind (i.e. shear) is the lack of analytical methods for the evaluation of the capacity and rigidity of the walls. Tests can be performed for a particular configuration of wall and the experimental results can be used. However, such an approach has limitations because designers need to use configurations which are already tested. In this article an analytical design methodology is presented for light-gauge steel shear walls sheathed with flat thin steel plates. Procedures take into account the fixing of the steel plate to the skeleton and are developed for the evaluation of the load bearing capacity and rigidity of the wall. The results are compared to results from Finite Element Models (FEM) and experiments. The conclusion is that the procedure has good accuracy for the evaluation of the load bearing capacity, but not sufficient for the calculation of the rigidity