Steel Structure And its Future
Under the strong support of national policies and the promotion of technological progress, the steel structure industry in China has broad prospects for future development. It is expected to move towards green, intelligent, and standardized directions, and its application areas will be further expanded, especially in the fields of affordable housing, infrastructure construction, and commercial buildings. Although the short-term growth rate has slowed down due to the transformation of the real estate market, in the long run, with the increasing proportion of steel structure applications and industrial upgrading, the steel structure industry still has huge growth potential and is expected to become a new growth point for high-quality development in China.
The latest national standard for the design of steel structures in China is GB 50017-2017, which came into effect on July 1, 2018 and replaced the previous GB 50017-2003 standard. This standard is applicable to the steel structure design of industrial and civil buildings and general structures, and introduces structural systems and seismic design content, as well as direct analysis methods for stability design, making it more comprehensively applicable to the actual design of steel structures.
The application of steel structure in daily life covers multiple fields, and the following are the main application scenarios and characteristics:
construction field
Main structure
Steel structures play a load-bearing role in high-rise and super high-rise buildings, and refined steel profiles can reduce column spacing and improve space utilization. For example, after using refined steel columns around the core tube of an office building, the utilization rate of each floor space is increased by 15%, and the span of the high-speed railway station dome grid can reach 30-100 meters.
Enclosure system
Steel structure supported glass curtain wall, with an error controlled within 2mm, suitable for super high-rise buildings. The modular installation of prefabricated curtain walls reduces the risk of high-altitude operations.
industrial sector
Heavy duty factory building
The main building of the power plant adopts a steel frame structure, which can bear heavy equipment weighing over 300 tons, with a span of 12 meters by 12 meters, reducing weight by 40% compared to concrete structures.
Anti corrosion process
The steel plant workshop adopts hot-dip galvanizing process (coating thickness ≥ 85 μ m) to meet the anti-corrosion requirements of acidic environment (SO ₂ concentration ≤ 50mg/m ³), with a service life of over 50 years.
Transportation sector
Bridge engineering
When the span of a simply supported beam bridge is ≤ 50m, an I-shaped steel box girder is used, which shortens the construction period by 60% compared to concrete; The auxiliary waterway bridge of Humen Second Bridge has a single span of 120 meters and is constructed without supports using variable cross-section steel box girders.
Rail Transit
The subway station adopts a portal frame structure with an economic span of 24-30 meters. The nodes are made of high toughness steel (Q370qE), which has superior seismic performance.
Environmental advantages
Prefabricated components in steel structure factories can achieve a 50% material recovery rate, reducing foundation construction costs by 40% compared to concrete structures. In a logistics park project in Shaanxi, foundation costs were reduced by 30%.