The Cold-Formed Steel Engineers Institute (CFSEI) will host a webinar on “Cold-Formed Steel Trusses and Blast Loads” on Thursday, April 21, 2016 at 3:00 p.m. EDT. The webinar is designed for architects, engineers, building officials and contractors. Participants are eligible for 1.5 PDHs.

Cold-formed steel trusses provide a durable and economical roof framing solution for buildings with pitched roofs, yet are not included as a conventional construction option in UFC 4-010--01, DoD Minimum Antiterrorism Standards for Buildings. This webinar will provide an overview of issues that should be considered when specifying or designing cold-formed steel trusses to resist air blast loading, including:

1. Test data that sheds light on limit states and the inelastic response behavior of cold-formed steel;
2. Characteristics associated with air blast loading applied to pitched roofs;
3. An overview of two analytical methods (i.e., single degree-of-freedom and finite element) that can be employed to analyze cold-formed steel trusses for air blast loading, including attendant assumptions, boundary condition considerations, and the limitations associated with each;
4. An overview of information that should be included in a delegated design specification; and
5. Two examples to illustrate the concepts discussed.

The webinar will be conducted by Mark Weaver, a Senior Engineer at Karagozian & Case Inc. (K&C), where he utilizes engineering and computational methods to analyze and design a wide variety of structural components to resist the effects of blast and impact loads. Mr. Weaver has designed new blast-resistant window, door, wall and roof systems using single degree-of-freedom and high-fidelity physics-based finite element models.

He has investigated the performance and potential failure modes of cold-formed steel systems via quasi-static laboratory and live-fire field testing, and has served as a blast engineering consultant for several federal and commercial projects in the U.S. and internationally. He is experienced with the application of Unified Facilities Criteria (UFC), particularly UFC 4-010-01, UFC 3-340-01, and UFC 3-340-02, and the analytical methods described within.

Mr. Weaver graduated from the University of Southern California with Magna Cum Laude honors and went on to receive both his Master of Civil Engineering and Master of Engineering Management degrees from The Johns Hopkins University and Duke University, respectively. He is a licensed Professional Engineer (Civil) and Structural Engineer in the state of California.

More information on the webinar and registration details is available at www.cfsei.org.