L-header Testing, Evaluation and Design Methodology

Abstract

Cold-formed steel L-shaped headers have gained popularity over the past few years due to their simplicity and cost effectiveness. While cold-formed steel conventional headers are widely used and can be designed for most applications, often it is necessary to reduce cost by using less material and labor hours. The L-shaped header provides both, a fast and economical solution to safely transfer applied loads to other structural elements in a building. As the name suggests, the main components of an L-shaped header is a piece of cold-formed steel formed into a shape resembling the letter L. An L-header assembly consists of a cold-formed steel angle with one short leg lapping over the top track and one long leg extending down the side of the wall above openings. The current design equations in the AISI Specification do not provide a reasonable design values for L-header assemblies. Testing of the assemblies was necessary to develop an easy to use design equations that can be used by designers. A total of 71 gravity tests and 38 uplift tests of L-header assemblies having variable sizes and thicknesses and spans were conducted at the NAHB Research Center. Results of the tests as well as a proposed design procedure is presented here.

Department(s)

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering

Document Type

Article - Conference proceedings

Document Version

Citation

File Type

text

Language(s)

English

Rights

© 2024 Elsevier, All rights reserved.

Publication Date

01 Dec 2000

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