Research Projects

Cold-Formed Steel (CFS) offers advantages for residential construction, but lacks design guidelines for Indian engineers. This hinders the growth of CFS as a material of choice in residential applications. CFS sections are thin shells, limiting their application to low-rise residential construction due to their singly symmetric nature. However, combining two individual CFS sections can increase their ultimate capacity. Currently, there are no specific design provisions for built-up cross-sections. The interaction between failure modes like local, distortional, and global buckling and their effects on ultimate capacity is a major reason why CFS built-up sections are not widely used in mid-rise residential applications. This research aims to study the interaction between failure modes, integrity of built-up sections, and the interaction between elements due to local, global, and distortional buckling. A full-field measurement technique, Digital Image Correlation (DIC), will be used to quantify local buckling, distortional buckling, global buckling, and interactive buckling.