ABSTRACT
Gypsum board panels are among one of the many types of panels currently used in Light Weight Steel (LWS) constructions made of Cold Formed Steel (CFS) frames primarily for sheathing the walls skeleton to form an envelope of the building. Contrarily, there choice as the sheathing panel for shear walls resisting the seismic loads in LWS construction is rather limited due the lack of guidelines on their seismic performance in European standards. The work presented here in attempts to bridge this gap by evaluating a suitable value of their behaviour factor, through a numerical study performed following the procedures of FEMA P695. The performance of archetype models, which represent a range of design parameters and building configurations is evaluated systematically through the static pushover and the incremental dynamic analysis. Based on the results, it is concluded that a behaviour factor (q) of 2.0 for CFS shear walls with gypsum board sheathing is appropriate.
