Design of steel sheathed cold-formed steel framed shear walls

•A design method is provided for steel sheathed CFS framed shear walls subjected to lateral loading.•The design method has been developed for inclusion in the new North American cold-formed steel standards.•Nominal shear resistance values are provided for various wall configurations.•A resistance factor for limit states design and an over-strength factor for seismic design are also provided.•Test based seismic force modification factors are presented.

A method for the design of steel sheathed cold-formed steel framed shear walls has been developed for inclusion in the American Iron and Steel Institute's North American standards for lateral design using a comprehensive database of single-storey shear wall tests carried out in Canada and in the United States. The wall configurations differed in terms of wall aspect ratio, framing and sheathing thickness, screw fastener schedule and framing reinforcement. The Equivalent Energy Elastic–Plastic (EEEP) analysis approach was used to derive key design information from the test data, including: nominal shear resistance, a resistance factor, an over-strength factor for capacity based seismic design and ‘test-based’ seismic force modification factors for ductility and over-strength.