Why high strength steel & tubes?

Advantage:
1. Reduce self-weight, material cost, improve design scheme
2. Tubes reduced the wind load, bigger stiffness, simple structural arrangements, reduce self-weight can cost
in basements.

Save material
Reduce self‐weight
More economic design

Disadvantages:
1. Young’s modulus is about the same as mild steel, using high strength steel is a waste of money when the
design is governed by deflections.
2. Material is not ductile enough
a) Prone to fracture
b) Not easy to weld
c) For beams, not enough rotation capacity
d) For frames, might not be applicable to design plastically

Compare with other material

1. Why not aluminum?
a) Cost
i. Working on aluminum is more expensive than steel: considering the tools, knowledge and the
price for fixing
ii. For material in 2002, aluminum is 25 times more expensive than iron, and 7.2 times more
expensive than steel (Al 1.14/pound, Iron 0.045/pound, steel is 3.5 times the price of iron)
b) Young’s modulus
i. Aluminum alloy 70 GPa (2700 kg / m3), Steel 210GPa (7500 kg / m3)
ii. Although aluminum alloy is much lighter than steel, but in consideration of deformations, it is
necessary to build the structure members in much bigger dimension / thickness
c) High temperature
i. Aluminum alloy has a lower melting point than steel (650 ºC to 1370 ºC)
ii. Put aluminum structure at disadvantage against fire design