Strength of cold-formed steel slotted track connections for out-of-plane wall loads

Inter-story vertical displacements in cold-formed steel (CFS) non-loadbearing construction is typically accommodated with slip clips, deflection tracks, or slotted tracks. Slotted tracks have the advantage of requiring no additional accessories to provide the desired performance and they are used extensively in building frame constructions. However, unlike deflection track connection design, industry standards or guidelines to compute the strength and deflection of slotted track connections for out-of-plane wall loads do not currently exist. Design professionals must rely exclusively on manufactured published design data - data that is often different even where slotted track sections are identical. In this paper, test informed, mechanics-based equations are proposed to estimate the design strength of CFS slotted tracks for out-of-plane loads imposed via connected studs. The proposed equations include both strength and serviceability criteria, and they are shown to provide reasonably accurate, manufacturer independent, estimates of slotted track connection strength.