How are the weight and money savings achieved when using high strength stainless steel? This is the question often asked by our customers. It’s easy to understand than in theory smaller wall thickness leads to savings but does it actually work in practice? Yes, it does.
High strength stainless hollow sections with our new enhanced strength class Stala500 can indeed save significant amounts of both weight and money without compromising on the strength or safety of the structure.
Let me show this with three common examples of load bearing situations found in steel structures.
1. Bending moment
The original hollow section is 100x100x6 mm and the steel grade is EN 1.4307. It can be replaced by 100x100x3 mm EN 1.4318 hollow section in STALA500 strength class.
The risk of buckling shall be evaluated case by case.
Weight save: 50%
Price save: up to 50%
2. Tension
The original hollow section is 100x100x6 mm and the steel grade is EN 1.4307. It can be replaced by 100x100x3 mm EN 1.4318 hollow section in Stala500 strength class.
Weight save: 50%
Price save: up to 50%
3. Compression
The original hollow section is 100x100x6 mm and the steel grade is EN 1.4307. It can be replaced by 100x100x5 mm EN 1.4318 hollow section in enhanced strength class STALA500.
In this case the possibility to reduce wall thickness is limited by risk of buckling. But even in this somewhat complicated scenario the weight savings amount to 16%. You might first think that the savings are minimal in this case – but let me remind you that you are literally saving raw material, and saving 16% of any natural resources is always a remarkable achievement!
Weight save: 16%
Price save: up to 16%
High Strength Stainless leads to remarkable reduction of environmental footprint
In most cases, when the stainless hollow sections have been switched to high strength versions in reasonable places of the structure, the material and weight savings are somewhere between the above examples. When we think about reducing a third of the raw material it’s already a huge improvement towards eco-friendliness. And that’s not all! To that we can add the lower C02 emissions and other environmental benefits that the lower weight of the structure brings during its lifecycle.
We don’t call it the Stainless Revolution for nothing. Switching to high strength stainless does matter.