What is the difference between structural light steel and heavy steel?

The difference between structural light steel and heavy steel

There is no uniform standard for determining the structure of heavy steel and light steel structure, but some data can be considered and judged:

• Workshop crane lifting weight: greater than or equal to 25 tons, can be considered as heavy steel structure.
• The amount of steel per square meter: greater than or equal to 50KG / ㎡, can be considered a heavy steel structure.
• Main component steel plate thickness: greater than or equal to 10MM, light steel structure with less.

In addition, there are some reference values: such as the cost per square meter, the maximum component weight, the maximum span, structural form, eaves and so on, these can provide empirical data in determining whether the workshop is heavy steel or light steel, of course, now a lot of buildings are light and heavy steel are available. But there are some we can be more sure that are heavy steel: such as petrochemical plant facilities, power plant buildings, large-span stadiums, exhibition centers, high-rise or ultra-high-rise steel structures.

In fact, there is no such thing as heavy steel in national codes and technical documents, and it is more appropriate to call general steel structure as "general steel" to differentiate light house steel structure. Because the scope of general steel structure is very wide, can contain all kinds of steel structures, no matter the load size, even including many contents of light steel structure, light housing steel structure technical regulations just for its "light" characteristics and provides some more specific content, and the scope is only limited to single-story portal frame.

Light steel is also a vague term and generally can have two understandings. One is the current "steel structure design code" (GBJ 17-88) in chapter 11 "round steel, small angle light steel structure", which refers to round steel and less than L45 * 4 and L56 * 36 * 4 angle made of light steel structure!

It can be seen that the difference between light steel and heavy steel is not in the lightness of the structure itself, but in the lightness of the enclosing material, but the concept of structural design is still the same.