SSAB’s Tubular Design Tools

SSAB has developed a unique tool for designing optimized roof trusses and frames with structural hollow sections. Finding optimal design is made easy and user just needs to input few key parameters; geometry, loads and steel grades. FrameCalc does the rest to either minimize the mass or manufacturing costs.

With FrameCalc it is easy to compare different steel grades in trusses and see the benefits of high strength steels yourself. In FrameCalc it is easy to change steel grade of components group to make comparative calculations. Often it is beneficial to utilize hybrid structure where heavy chords are higher grade to save weight and lighter braces are lower grade to enable smaller weld throat thickness.

The design rules for the structures are based on Eurocode 3 and the equations are selected according to the SSAB Hollow Section Handbooks where user can select to utilize SSAB specific design rules for tubes.

FrameCalc has built-in National Annexes of Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, Latvia, Germany and United Kingdom.

FrameCalc can also include 15 minutes fire design without protection or calculate critical temperature for components.

FrameCalc is easy to use tool for SSAB’s customers and designers who can quickly optimize structures which makes it an excellent concept for making quotations. It is also possible to check the concept in more detail with SSAB’s FrameFEM tool.

FrameCalc’s optimized structures provide a good starting point for iterative design process. With automatically generated report it is easy to document the design process with different selections. FrameCalc provides easy way to transfer results to FrameFEM where the structure can be analyzed in more detail. In addition to that it is possible to download models of the optimized structure in CIS and IFC formats and then import the information to 3rd party software.

With FrameFEM, you can design and specify steel frame structures — including their welded joints — according to built-in Eurocode 3 design rules. FrameFEM is suitable for designing welded 2D tubular assemblies and it fully leverages SSAB’s wide range of structural hollow sections when making the calculations. SSAB offers FrameFEM calculation tool for free of charge.

FrameFEM provides functions to easily design different 2D structures made of structural hollow sections by creating geometry from scratch or modifying existing geometry.

Designer can determine different load types such as dead, wind or snow load from which common load cases are automatically generated. Custom load cases can also be generated and all the used factors in the load combinations are shown to user.

The design rules in FrameFEM are based on Eurocode 3 and SSAB Hollow Section Handbooks. The buckling lengths for components can be selected manually.

Then you can download an automatically generated PDF of the results which includes all design equations with their limits. From the report it is easy to check the utilization rate for each component and joint.

SSAB profiles can be found from Section Viewer. The Section Viewer provides cross-section dimensions among with other strength related data.