The Cold-Formed Steel Research Consortium (CFSRC) is defined by its mission, vision, and core values. CFSRC brings together researchers and facilities across institutions to form the premiere organization in the world devoted to comprehensive, innovative, and impactful research to advance the design of cold-formed steel structures. Cold-formed steel structures utilize ultra-efficient thin-walled members, provide minimal cycle times for construction, and are highly modularizable and form an important part of the footprint for the next generation of sustainable, resilient, and affordable buildings and infrastructure. Consortium research leverages a broad set of facilities that include unique-in-the-nation testing apparatus as well as high performance computer clusters’ for high fidelity simulations. The consortium partners with major industry associations, industry, and the federal government to achieve its mission.
Mission: To provide world-leading research that enables structural engineers and manufacturers to realize the full potential of structures utilizing cold-formed steel. To provide the world’s pre-eminent training experience for cold-formed steel researchers. To provide the cold-formed steel industry with world-leading research capabilities that are responsive to both short and long term needs of the industry. To enable engineers to quickly utilize the latest research and speed adoption of research into appropriate codes and standards. To leverage existing industry funding to win external research funds.
Vision: The Consortium is recognized by engineers, manufacturers, students, researchers, and funding agencies as the premier organization in the world for performing research in cold-formed steel structures. The Consortium grows the cold-formed steel research enterprise in the United States to greater than one million dollars per year.
Values: General solutions using fundamental knowledge create the most long-term benefits. Enable the best engineers to solve the most unique problems. Use experiments to gain knowledge, not to fill tables.
Based on these principles a Charter for the CFSRC was established at the Johns Hopkins University in May 2013. CFSRC concluded operations in December 2023 (see this news item).
PDF: CFSRC at-a-glance