Reliability calibrations for the design of cold-formed steel portal frames by advanced analysis.

Highlights • Advanced structural analysis method can design steel structures based on their overall system behaviour. • A system resistance factor is used to control the structural failure risk due to uncertainties in system resistance. • Four typical cold-formed steel portal frames are analysed for their system reliabilities. • A limit-state design criterion is developed which is consistent with a desired level of system reliability. Abstract The steel industry is developing a design-by-advanced analysis specification for cold-formed steel construction. This effort provides an opportunity to utilize the latest nonlinear structural analysis (advanced analysis) to design steel structures based on their overall system behaviour. This paper concerns the system reliability calibrations of this design-by-analysis method, with a particular focus on cold-formed steel portal frames. Four typical portal frames are considered. The system reliability assessment takes into account all important random variables. A limit-state design criterion is developed which is consistent with a desired level of system safety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]