Cold-Formed Steel Design

Cold-formed steel is widely used for buildings, automobiles, equipment, home and office furniture, utility poles, storage racks, grain bins, highway products, drainage facilities, and bridges. Its popularity can be attributed to ease of mass production and prefabrication, uniform quality, lightweight designs, economy in transportation and handling, and quick and simple erection or installation.

Cold-formed steel has significant market share because of its advantages over other construction materials, as well as the synergy of industry partnerships that promote cold-formed steel research and products. This includes codes and standards development that is spearheaded by the American Iron and Steel Institute. AISI's codes and standards work is conducted under the auspices of SMDI's Construction Market program.

Overview of Cold-Formed Steel Applications in Building Construction - A helpful and informative resource on the history and applications for cold-formed steel in building construction. It also introduces organizations that play important roles in the cold-formed steel industry. 

Direct Strength Design - This paper provides a review of the Direct Strength Method for cold-formed steel design, which was formally adopted in North American design specifications in 2004 as an alternative to the traditional Effective Width Method.

Cold-Formed Steel Design Tools - Several cold-formed steel standards, design guides and manuals are available as free downloads from this site (see navigation bar at left). AISI also offers an extensive array of resources available for purchase from its online store (click here).