Splitting Failures in Trapezoidal Steel Roof Cladding

Abstract

High wind events such as hurricanes and storms often cause severe damage to crest-fixed thin steel roof claddings. Past research on wind damage has shown that low cycle fatigue cracking of steel roof sheeting around the fastener holes has been the reason for the premature pull-through failures of roof claddings under fluctuating wind forces. Such a situation will be at its worst if the roof sheeting is already split at the fastener holes. An inspection of trapezoidal steel roofs has shown that roofing has been split in the transverse direction due to accidental or poor workmanship-caused overtightening of screw fasteners. Once split, even slightly, the roofing can only survive a few cycles of wind uplift loading. Therefore an investigation using laboratory experiments and finite element analyses was carried out to study the splitting behaviour of two commonly used high tensile steel trapezoidal roof claddings. Analytical and experimental results agreed reasonably well and presented a good understanding of the splitting behaviour of trapezoidal roof claddings. This paper presents the details of this investigation and the results.