Steel

Construction’s Material Technology

Introduction
Steel is an alloy of iron and carbon that is widely used in construction and other
applications because of its hardness and tensile strength.

Carbon, other elements, and inclusions within iron act as hardening agents that
prevent the movement of dislocations that naturally exist in the iron atom crystal
lattices. The carbon in typical steel alloys may contribute up to 2.1% of its weight.

Varying the amount of alloying elements, their form in the steel either as solute
elements, or as precipitated phases, retards the movement of those dislocations that
make iron so ductile and weak, and thus controls qualities such as the hardness,
ductility, and tensile strength of the resulting steel.

Source : Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Source : www.wtec.org
Mechanical Properties
The properties that need to be considered by designers when specifying steel
construction products are:

Strength
Toughness
Ductility
Weldability
Durability.
Strength
Yield strength is the most common property that the designer will need as it is the
basis used for most of the rules given in design codes . In European Standards for
structural carbon steels (including weathering steel ), the primary designation relates
to the yield strength, e.g. S355 steel is a structural steel with a specified minimum
yield strength of 355 N/mm².
Strength

"Engineering" (red) and "true"

(blue) stress vs. strain curve
typical of structural steel
1. Ultimate strength
2. Yield strength
3. Fracture
4. Strain hardening region
5. Necking region
A: Engineering stress
B: True stress
Toughness
It is in the nature of all materials to contain some imperfections. In steel these
imperfections take the form of very small cracks. If the steel is insufficiently tough, the
'crack' can propagate rapidly, without plastic deformation and result in a 'brittle
fracture'.

The risk of brittle fracture increases with

thickness, tensile stress, stress raisers
and at colder temperatures. The
toughness of steel and its ability to resist
brittle fracture are dependent on a
number of factors that should be
considered at the specification stage.
Ductility
Ductility is a measure of the degree to which a material can strain or elongate between
the onset of yield and eventual fracture under tensile loading

The designer relies on ductility for a number of aspects of design, including

redistribution of stress at the ultimate limit state, bolt group design, reduced risk of
fatigue crack propagation and in the fabrication processes of welding, bending and
straightening.

The various standards for the grades of steel in the above table insist on a minimum
value for ductility so the design assumptions are valid and if these are specified
correctly the designer can be assured of their adequate performance.
Weldability
All structural steels are essentially weldable. However, welding involves locally
melting the steel, which subsequently cools.

The cooling can be quite fast because the surrounding material, e.g. the beam, offers
a large 'heat sink' and the weld (and the heat introduced) is usually relatively small.

This can lead to hardening of the 'heat

affected zone' (HAZ) and to reduced
toughness. The greater the thickness of
material, the greater the reduction of
toughness.
Durability
A further important property is that of corrosion
prevention. Although special corrosion resistant
steels are available these are not normally used in
building construction. The exception to this is
weathering steel .

The most common means of providing corrosion

protection to construction steel is by painting or
galvanizing. The type and degree of coating
protection required depends on the degree of
exposure, location, design life, etc. In many cases,
under internal dry situations no corrosion protection
coatings are required other than appropriate fire
protection.
 Other mechanical properties

• Modulus of elasticity, E = 210,000 N/mm²

• Shear modulus, G = E/[2(1 + ν)] N/mm², often taken as 81,000 N/mm²
• Poisson's ratio, ν = 0.3
• Coefficient of thermal expansion, α = 12 x 10-6/°C (in the ambient temperature range).
Advantages
Advantages
Test procedure

See ASTM for a complete list of test procedure