The Cold-Formed Steel Engineers Institute will host a webinar on “Cold-Formed Steel Strap-Braced Walls: AISI S213 to AISI S400” on June 12. The webinar is designed for architects, engineers, building officials and contractors. Participants are eligible for 1.5 continuing education hours.

A common means of constructing the lateral load-resisting system of cold-formed steel structures is to provide diagonal tension-only strap braces in the walls. The strap-braced walls act as a vertical concentrically braced system that transfers the lateral loads from the roof and floor levels to the foundation. Provisions for the design of strap-braced walls can be found in AISI S213-07, North American Standard for Cold-Formed Steel Framing – Lateral Design. A new standard is being developed to replace AISI S213 that will contain seismic-specific design requirements and recent research results. The new standard will be known as AISI S400, North American Standard for Seismic Design of Cold-Formed Steel Structural Systems.

The webinar will provide information on the inelastic lateral load-carrying performance of CFS frame strap-braced walls that are assembled using screws and welds. It will also relate observations made in the laboratory with the design provisions found in AISI S213 and AISI S400. These design provisions are based on the results of more than 80 tests on braced walls constructed of different configurations of braces, connections, aspect ratios, and more.

The webinar will be conducted by Colin A. Rogers, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of Civil Engineering and Applied Mechanics at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. Dr. Rogers has been involved in research on cold-formed steel structures for more than 20 years. He has participated in the testing of more than 350 cold-formed steel walls constructed with wood sheathing, steel sheathing and with strap bracing, as well as 50 tests conducted on corrugated steel roof deck diaphragms. He is a member of several technical committees associated with the CSA Group in Canada and the American Iron and Steel Institute.

More information on the webinar and registration details are available at www.cfsei.org.