Design of shot nailed steel sheeting connection at ambient and elevated temperatures

Shot nailed connections are widely used in roof constructions to fasten cold-formed steel sheeting to supporting trusses. At ambient temperatures, neither EN 1993-1-8 nor EN 1993-1-3 can be used directly for this type of connection. Besides, no design guidelines are available in EN 1993-1-2 for designing the same type of connection in fire. In this paper, with the verified Finite Element (FE) models and procedures, three major failure modes under lap shear loads, such as bearing failure, shear-out failure and net-section failure, are investigated. In addition, the material bearing failures, the effects from out-of-plane curling of thin sheet and the contribution from frictions between the connected parts are analyzed at both ambient and elevated temperatures. Further, parametric analyses are conducted to investigate the effects of the end distance, the edge distance and the protuberance height on the connection resistance. After that, the design resistance functions for bolted connections given in EN 1993-1-8 are revised for designing shot nailed connections. Finally, the design resistance functions are calibrated using First Order Reliability Method (FORM) and the partial safety factor is derived.