Session Dates
19 Oct 2000
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 AlSI 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
Research Center/Lab(s)
Wei-Wen Yu Center for Cold-Formed Steel Structures
Meeting Name
15th International Specialty Conference on Cold-Formed Steel Structures
Publisher
University of Missouri--Rolla
Document Version
Final Version
Rights
© 2000 University of Missouri--Rolla, All rights reserved.
Document Type
Article - Conference proceedings
File Type
text
Language
English
Recommended Citation
LaBoube, Roger A. and Elhajj, N. R., "L-header Testing, Evaluation and Design Methodology" (2000). CCFSS Proceedings of International Specialty Conference on Cold-Formed Steel Structures (1971 - 2018). 3.
https://scholarsmine.mst.edu/isccss/15iccfss/15iccfss-session7/3
L-header Testing, Evaluation and Design Methodology
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 AlSI 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.
