Hybrid truss design for cost-efficient trusses

High-strength steel has been a success story in heavy equipment and vehicles, offering lighter weight, wear and impact resistance, and hassle-free fabrication. These same benefits apply to structural engineering applications: longer spans, weight reduction for reduced foundation loads, and greater load-carrying capability are all possible thanks to high-strength steel.

Using high-strength steel in chords is crucial for achieving weight and cost savings. Mild S355 steel can be used for brace members, because the brace members hold most of the fabrication effort, it is usually more economic to machine and weld milder steels due to often higher tooling and welding costs for SHS. This is why a hybrid truss design, especially for long-span trusses, proves to be the most cost-efficient solution.

SSAB’s Domex double-grade hollow sections, with two test certificates for S355J2H and S420MH, thus make an ideal choice in truss design. And even where high-strength steel can be challenging in longer, slender columns due to buckling behavior, our double-grade hollow sections have been tested for compressive strength and have been granted buckling curve B. The higher strength of the tube benefits shorter columns and the improved buckling curve benefits longer columns. This combination creates a highly resistant, cost-efficient column.

Why structural hollow sections from SSAB

SSAB’s high-strength SHS steel tubes offer structural design engineers several advantages that can help solve engineering problems from the everyday to the exceptional.

Potential benefits and opportunities:

  • Increase allowable design stresses by leveraging the high-yield and tensile strength. This way, you can likely reduce the wall thickness and use less steel.
  • Reduce dead load and self-weight. Less substructure is needed to support a lighter superstructure, so you can gain additional savings in foundations and piling, for example.
  • You can use simplified structural components and construction techniques, especially for bigger structures or heavily loaded sections. This means you can save not only on materials, but on fabrication, handling, transportation and construction.
  • With thinner gauges, you can substantially reduce the volumes of deposited weld material and thus pollutants, weld consumables and weld times.
  • More efficient structures let you minimize embodied carbon in structures, a growing environmental concern.

Customer cases

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SSAB Hollow sections in exact lengths and helpful customer service supports the competitiveness of customer welding steel constructions

SSAB delivered around 200 tons of structural hollow sections to its customer STH Steel for the steel frame of Snellman’s new warehouse. New warehouse will be 40x60 meters and transportation will drive under the warehouse expansion to the slaughterhouse.

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Active collaboration to serve end customers - High quality tubes speed up the production

SSAB has been collaborating with Ateno for Tubular products since 2014. Over the years, delivery volumes have grown significantly and collaboration has deepened. SSAB currently supplies both hollow sections and precision tubes from tube mills. Products from precision tubes are further processed for use in, for example, mechanical engineering and the furniture industry. Parts of hollow sections are processed into parts of transport and steel construction. Ateno also makes forest machine parts from high-strength steels. In addition to tubular products, SSAB also supplies significant quantities of sheet and profile products to Ateno.

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Superior weldability and produced-to-length deliveries from mill – When highest quality and production efficiency are required

SSAB delivers structural hollow sections to the frame structures of Best-Hall’s buildings. One of the recent projects was Duodot. SSAB delivered over 100 tons of structural hollow sections to the Duodot project for steel frame warehouse building in southwestern Finland. Best-Hall built a logistic warehouse building for its customer for storing tires. The building is a combination of two halls, one part is 87 meters long, 44 meters wide, and the height is 9 meters from the lowest point. The other part is 132 meters long, 33 meters wide and 9 meters high.

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