Vehicular Access Door Wind Analysis and Design

A multi-year research program was recently completed that studied rolling sheet vehicular access door behavior during an extreme wind event. The work resulted in a new design protocol for the metal building industry and door manufacturers. Existing door curtain and jamb design approaches are viable for rigid door jambs, e.g., the wind-bar attached directly to a masonry wall, however for flexible jambs, e.g., a cold-formed steel framing system, the windlock forces and the door deflections should be calculated considering jamb and framing stiffness. A beam strip model based on an Euler-Bernoulli elastica solution is implemented in a freely available computer program that assumes curtain one-way action to calculated these deflections and forces. The project culminated in an access door analysis-based design approach coupled with a wind analysis computer tool and spreadsheet tutorials that treat both door serviceability and jamb strength limit states.