The Advantages & Disadvantages Of Steel Frame ...

13 Jan.,2025

 

The Advantages & Disadvantages Of Steel Frame ...

Steel frame construction is steadily increasing its market share in the construction and civil engineering sector. However, is steel framing an effective construction method compared to the alternatives? In this article we will weigh out the pros and cons of structural steel frame construction as a guide for developers and design engineers exploring different construction options.

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Understanding Steel Frame Construction

Steel frame construction used to be primarily used for large, simple structures, such as garages, large agricultural buildings and warehouses &#; as well as high-rise buildings. This is how steel frame construction is still understood in popular belief, but it is now also used for a wide range of other types of development, including offices, factories, schools, public buildings and some residential dwellings.

Steel frame construction is a good option for a diversity of projects for many reasons, including:

  • Durability
  • Affordability
  • Sustainability

Structural steel components can quickly be fabricated off-site and then transported to the construction site when needed, minimising onsite labour requirements and reducing the impact of variables that can delay a project, such as adverse weather.

This aside, there are several distinct advantages to steel frame construction from the point of view of fabrication, as well as a couple of disadvantages. These will be noted below:

Advantages of Steel Frame Construction

Steel frame constructions offer the following advantages compared to brick, concrete and wooden constructions.

1) Strength & Durability

Structural steel components are lighter and stronger than weight-bearing wood or concrete products. A typical weight-bearing steel fabrication is 30% to 50% lighter than a wooden equivalent. This makes steel frame construction far stronger and more durable than traditional wood framed alternatives.

2) Easy Fabrication In Different Sizes

Steel studs are available in a variety of sizes and can be fabricated order. This means they can be customised to bear specific loads in buildings of all different types and sizes.

3) Fire Resistance

Steel frame constructions are highly resistant to fire, reducing the fire risk to a building and retarding the spread of a fire should one occur. Special flame retardant coatings act to increase this property of structural steel.

4) Pest & Insect Resistant

Structural steel components are immune to the degrading effects of burrowing insects and mammals &#; which can cause a problem for wooden framework unless adequately treated.

5) Moisture & Weather Resistance

Structural steel can have good moisture resistant properties, depending on its carbon content. Hot zinc coating and extra powder treatments for enhanced rust resistance will make a structural steel component even more immune to the effects of water &#; an important consideration for components exposed to the weather.

The Disadvantages of Steel Frame Construction

Steel frame constructions do have a couple of disadvantages, the most regularly cited being:

1) Thermal Conductivity

Steel is not known for its warmth, due to its high efficiency in conducting heat. The insulation value of walls can be reduced by as much as half when heat is transferred away through steel studs, which is not good news for energy retention in a building. Where steel frame construction is used, insulation measures need to be put in place to counteract the thermal conductivity of steel.

2) Reduced Flexibility On Site

One of the benefits of using wooden structural components is the ability to adjust them on site. A component can be cut down to size, nails hammered in to strengthen the join and so on. This obviously can&#;t happen with steel. The measurements of steel need to be precisely calculated in advance, because a steel fabrication is delivered to site in its final form, ready to be slotted into the building. This is of course one of the big advantages of steel, but if the fabrication has resulted in an inaccurate component for whatever reason, the project may be held up while the framework is sent back to the workshop for adjustment. You can avoid this issue by working with a fabrication company such as GLW, where we take a consultative approach to accuracy and measurements from the very beginning, to avoid any unpleasant surprises on site.

3) Supporting Structures

Steel frame constructions rarely work on their own. They usually require drywall, sheathing, insulation and supplementary wooden components to bring a building together. In the opinion of some construction businesses, this longer construction time is an argument against steel frame constructions, although usually the time savings outweigh any adjustments that need to be made on site.

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Steel Frame Constructions For Your Project?

If you are in the planning stages of a development and want help deciding whether steel frame construction is a good choice for you, please get in touch with one of our engineers today. We can talk you through your different fabrication options and explain how structural steel fabrications can increase the sturdiness of your building, reduce building costs and cut construction time.

Advantages and disadvantages of steel for warehouse ...

The steel structure is widely used in industrial buildings. Steel structure warehouse means that the main load-bearing components are composed of steel. Including steel columns, steel beams, steel structure foundations, steel roof trusses, and steel roofs, note that the walls of steel structures can also be maintained with brick walls. Due to the increase in steel production, many have begun to use steel structure warehouses, which can be divided into light and heavy steel structure workshops. Industrial and civil buildings constructed with steel are called steel structures.
The advantages of steel warehouse construction are as follows:
1. Wide range of uses, suitable for factories, warehouses, office buildings, gymnasiums, hangars, etc. It is not only suitable for single-story long-span buildings, but also for the construction of multi-story or high-rise buildings.
2. The building is simple and the construction period is short. All components are prefabricated in the factory, and the site only needs to be assembled easily, which greatly shortens the construction period. A building of 6,000 square meters can be basically installed in just 40 days.
3. Durable and easy to maintain, steel structure buildings can resist harsh weather and only need simple maintenance.
4. Beautiful and practical, the lines of the steel structure building are simple and smooth, with a modern sense. Colored wall panels are available in a variety of colours, and other materials are also available for the walls, allowing for greater flexibility.5. The construction cost is reasonable, the steel structure building is light in weight, reduces the basic cost, the construction speed is fast, and it can be completed and put into production as soon as possible, and the comprehensive economic benefit is much better than that of the concrete structure building.

Disadvantages of steel structure workshop construction:

First, the foundation of the steel structure workshop is easy to instability

Because the characteristics of the steel structure itself will be overall instability or local instability, which is related to the whole process of the foundation and the bolt, and the two are also interrelated, most of the steel structure plant instability is caused by steel, once the compression part or the flexion part of the slenderness ratio exceeds the standard value, it will lose stability. There are more objective factors leading to instability than efficiencies, such as load change, initial defects of steel, and different support conditions that will lead to instability. Foundation problems can be divided into three types: foundation strength, foundation deformation, and foundation destruction.

1. The strength of the foundation is generally manifested in the insufficient bearing capacity of the foundation and the instability of the foundation or slope.

2. The problem of foundation deformation is concentrated in soft soil, wet loess, expansive soil and seasonally frozen soil, etc. In these areas, excessive deformation and uneven settlement of foundation occur due to loading.

3. There are three forms of foundation failure: local shear failure, overall shear failure, and punching failure.

Two, steel structure warehouse steel roof damage

1. The vast majority of steel roof-bearing members are composed of thin-walled C-shaped steel and slender rods. The section shape is complex, and the node stress is concentrated and there is eccentric gravity.

2. when the steel roof design, diagram calculation load, and calculation is correct, almost close to the calculation of limit state, the bearing capacity of the structure safety reserve minimum, sensitivity to humidity, corrosion, and overload is extremely high, is easy to cause the failure accident factors, if they appeared in the process of manufacture, installation and use of various negative effects added, Steel structure roof is the most serious part of steel structure workshop.

3. The main damage is rod bending, roof collapse, node plate bending or cracking, frame rod fracture, roof deflection beyond the standard roof support buckling, water leakage, etc.

Three, steel corrosion of steel structure workshop

Steel structure warehouse exposed to the outside, the corrosion resistance of ordinary steel is not strong, especially in the external environment with large humidity and corrosive media, steel structure is easy to rust corrosion, greatly weakening the bearing capacity of components. A large number of statistics show that the collapse of steel roof truss caused by corrosion and lack of maintenance accounts for a large proportion of the total.

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