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As 4100

This document summarizes key properties of steel that are important for structural design. It states that steel is the strongest, stiffest and densest of common building materials, with tensile and compressive yield strengths of 250-500 MPa. While yield strength determines load capacity, the elastic modulus or Young's modulus of 200 GPa is important for buckling resistance. Steel has a density of 7.8 tonnes/m3, giving it higher strength-to-weight than concrete but lower than aluminium. Structural steels are also ductile, allowing them to relieve stresses through local yielding and absorb energy without catastrophic failure. Factors that affect brittle fracture strength in steel include composition, temperature, plate thickness, strain

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162 views

As 4100

This document summarizes key properties of steel that are important for structural design. It states that steel is the strongest, stiffest and densest of common building materials, with tensile and compressive yield strengths of 250-500 MPa. While yield strength determines load capacity, the elastic modulus or Young's modulus of 200 GPa is important for buckling resistance. Steel has a density of 7.8 tonnes/m3, giving it higher strength-to-weight than concrete but lower than aluminium. Structural steels are also ductile, allowing them to relieve stresses through local yielding and absorb energy without catastrophic failure. Factors that affect brittle fracture strength in steel include composition, temperature, plate thickness, strain

Uploaded by

shiruhan
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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2.

1 INTRODUCTION

To design effectively it is necessary to know something about the properties of the material. The main
properties of steel, which are of importance to the structural designer, are summarised in this chapter.

2.2 STRENGTH, STIFFNESS AND DENSITY Steel is the strongest, stiffest and densest of the common
building materials. Spring steels can have ultimate tensile strengths of 2000 MPa or more, but normal
structural steels have tensile and compressive yield strengths in the range 250-500 MPa, about 8 times
higher than the compressive strength and over 100 times the tensile strength of normal concrete.
Tempered structural aluminium alloys have yield strengths around 250 MPa, similar to the lowest grades
of structural steel.

Although yield strength is an important characteristic in determining the load carrying capacity of a
structural element, the elastic modulus or Young’s modulus E, a measure of the stiffness or stress per
unit strain of a material, is also important when buckling is a factor, since buckling load is a function of E,
not of strength. E is about 200 GPa for carbon steels, including all structural steels except stainless
steels, which are about 5% lower. This is about 3 times that of Aluminium and 5-8 times that of
concrete. Thus increasing the yield strength or grade of a structural steel will not increase its buckling
capacity.

The specific gravity of steel is 7.8, i.e. its mass is about 7.8 tonnes/m3, about three times that of
concrete and aluminium. This gives it a strength to weight ratio higher than concrete but lower than
structural aluminium.

2.3 DUCTILITY

Structural steels are ductile at normal temperatures under normal conditions. This property has two
important implications for design. First, high local stresses due to concentrated loads or stress raisers
(e.g. holes, cracks, sudden changes of cross section) are not usually a major problem as they are with
high strength steels, because ductile steels can yield locally and relive these high stresses. Some design
procedures rely on this ductile behaviour. Secondly, ductile materials have high “toughness,” meaning
that they can absorb energy by plastic deformation so as not to fail in a sudden catastrophic manner, for
example during an earthquake. So it is important to ensure that ductile behaviour is maintained.

The factors affecting brittle fracture strength are as follows: (1) Steel composition, including grain size
of microscopic steel structures, and the steel temperature history. (2) Temperature of the steel in
service. (3) Plate thickness of the steel. (4) Steel strain history (cold working, fatigue etc.) (5) Rate of
strain in service (speed of loading). (6) Internal stress due to welding contraction.

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