Evaluation of Conventional Construction Techniques for Enhancing the Blast Resistance of Steel Stud Walls

Cold-formed steel stud walls are an attractive alternative to wooden stud walls because of their ductility, sustainability, and resistance to insects, mold, and rot. To date, engineers have faced challenges using steel stud walls to mitigate blast loads because of strict response limits set forth by existing standards that address blast-resistant design. Because of the limited past research on the response of steel stud walls subject to blasts, uncertainties exist regarding how these systems transition from elastic to inelastic response, particularly when lateral torsional buckling or local buckling of a section occurs. Existing standards used to design structures to mitigate blast loads penalize the use of steel stud walls by incorporating large safety factors that make the design of these systems uneconomical, which prevents engineers from taking full advantage of their benefits. The goal of the research described in this paper is to evaluate the suitability of conventional construction techniques to design and build steel stud walls that are capable of resisting blast effects associated with common threat scenarios. The work carried out to meet this goal included four controlled series of laboratory experiments. Results from this study demonstrate that the overall stiffness and strength of steel stud walls can be significantly greater than the values currently indicated in available design guidelines and that steel stud walls can be utilized to resist blast threats using conventional construction methods that add little cost to traditional designs.