At Constructalia, we are always striving to bring you the most up-to-date and easy-to-find information about ArcelorMittal Europe steel products and solutions for construction. We spent some time this summer creating new points of reference on Constructalia for you – our valued users.

Constructalia cinematheque

We built a cinematheque to house product, event, training, project, and corporate videos in one place. With just the click of a button, you can be watching the latest webinar or checking out the newest product video.

Steel grades

Looking for steel grade information, but don’t want to search by product? We gathered all of our available mechanical, technical, chemical, and coating particulars for ArcelorMittal steel grades into one hub page for easy access.

Partners

As our Partners section continues to grow, we decided it was time to renovate. You can now locate our partners by category, such as roofing & cladding, agriculture, or light steel structures & profiles.

Text:
Constructalia

Images:
ArcelorMittal Europe - Flat Products, P. Le Pense
Xavier Font Solà
Meteor Systems
ArcelorMittal International
Meko Metal
BP2.eu®

Hywind Tampen will soon be the world’s largest floating offshore wind farm. It is currently under construction, using 200 tonnes of specialty ropes produced in France by ArcelorMittal WireSolutions Bourg-en-Bresse.

Wind energy to reduce emissions

Hywind Tampen is an 88 MW floating wind project in the Norwegian North Sea, located approximately 140 km off the Norwegian coast and consisting of 11 wind turbines supplying the electricity for two offshore platforms. It will be the world’s first floating wind farm to power offshore oil and gas platforms. The wind power solution will help reduce the use of gas turbine power, while also offsetting 200 000 tonnes of CO2 emissions and 1000 tonnes of NOx emissions per year.

ArcelorMittal mooring wires secure the turbines

In April 2020, ArcelorMittal Bourg-en-Bresse was selected by Equinor and Aker Solutions to supply a complete package of bridle mooring wires for the fabrication of Equinor’s Hywind Tampen.

In 2021, ArcelorMittal Bourg-en-Bresse delivered 70 segments of sheathed spiral mooring wires fitted with forged sockets required for the project, representing approximately 200 tonnes of steel. The mooring wires have a diameter between 77 and 105 mm, a length of 85 metres, and will form part of the anchoring system that ensures the stability of the wind turbines.

Fruitful collaboration between ArcelorMittal’s business divisions

ArcelorMittal won the contract for the Hywind Tampen project thanks to excellent cooperation between ArcelorMittal WireSolutions Bourg-en-Bresse and ArcelorMittal Projects. Since 2020, ArcelorMittal Projects has been supporting Bourg-en-Bresse in all prospective rope projects. For this project, ArcelorMittal took advantage of the pre-existing frame and cooperation agreement between AkerSolutions and ArcelorMittal Projects for other steel products (plates, beams, and tubes). This provided a great competitive advantage.

Congratulating the project team, Jean-Marc Liegeois, CEO of ArcelorMittal WireSolutions and Revigny said: “I would like to congratulate the teams working on this project as it confirms ArcelorMittal Bourg-en-Bresse’s ability to produce specialty ropes in a short time. It also shows that we have the competencies, the required know-how, and the market position to become a major player in the growing industry of floating wind farms. Once completed in 2022, Hywind Tampen will be the world’s largest floating offshore wind farm and will produce the world’s first renewable power for the offshore oil and gas industry, reinforcing our low-carbon commitment.”

Text:
ArcelorMittal Europe Communications
Constructalia

Images:
Equinor ASA
ArcelorMittal

Related link(s)

Hywind Tampen

Using an 80 mm high trapezoidal steel profile alongside a lower volume of poured concrete, Cofraplus® 80 outperforms a traditional precast slab in a greener and more environmentally conscious package.

A new flooring solution for construction companies that want to build differently

With an estimated 25% reduction in overall slab weight, the Cofraplus® 80 flooring system has a positive impact on surrounding load bearing beams, columns, and even foundations, leading to more cost effective, lower mass, and ultimately more sustainable construction. Cofraplus® 80 reduces CO2 emissions by 15% compared to a traditional precast slab.

The cost savings and environmental benefits extend into efficient transportation, storage, and installation. For a 1400 m² floor, Cofraplus® 80 requires only one truck delivery to site and 12 crane movements to unload (as the lightweight profiles can be efficiently stacked) compared with 8 deliveries and 96 crane movements for a prefabricated slab.

Similarly, during installation, a single Cofraplus® 80 profile weighs only 52 kg whereas the equivalent precast slab weighs 1875 kg. A single team can manually install up to 600 m2 safely in just one day while a crane is needed to install the same surface of precast slab.

Thus, logistics is one of the key areas where Cofraplus® 80 really scores over the prefabricated concrete alternative.

Flexibility and long spans

Cofraplus® 80 is flexible enough to be adapted to specific project requirements and detailed design drivers. It can be used alongside all structural materials – including steel or timber beams and concrete - and with any kind of modern build method.

ArcelorMittal Construction has developed a new range of dedicated system accessories that provides a complete solution for installing the slab and pouring the concrete.

Suspended elements such as tubes, ducts, and suspended ceiling fixtures can be anchored using a specific accessory so there is no need for drilling of the concrete during installation or refurbishment. This saves time and cost on floor adaptations and reduces noise levels for those living or working nearby.

In standard mode, the system is compatible with through-deck welding connectors, or it can be supplied in a pre-punched version to suit shear connectors welded to the beam.

The Cofraplus® 80 system can span up to 4.5 m without props and more than 6.5 m with props. The geometry of the prefabricated steel means that it can serve both as shuttering during the pouring phase and reinforcement during the service phase. Its specific geometry means that composite action with the concrete is optimal.

Text:
ArcelorMittal Construction
Constructalia

Images:
ArcelorMittal Construction

Join Steligence® for this free English-language webinar on Wednesday 7 July 2021 at 13.00 CEST.

Topic: HyPer grades - galvanised high strength steels for structural engineering

Scope: Europe

Presenter: Jérôme Guth, Metallic coated steels segment Leader at ArcelorMittal Europe – Flat Products

Cold formed steel profiles are important components for buildings’ structural applications. They are commonly used to design primary or secondary structures to support floors, roofs, and facade elements in the form of purlins, rails, and decking. They distribute the various loads from the building envelope to the main frame and the foundations.

They are also used in other structural applications such as silos and tanks, conventional or high-bay racks, and solar mounting systems.

During this webinar, the range of metallic coated high strength steels for these applications - available in two standard families: construction grades and high strength low alloy (HSLA) grades - will be presented and their specific properties explained.

Particular attention will be paid to how the range of HyPer grade steels for construction is fulfilling the material requirements of the Eurocode 3 design and material rules to enable building owners to construct safe and cost-effective buildings. Indeed, even at a slightly higher costs, these grades allow a more effective structure to be designed in addition to saving weight and cutting the overall cost of your projects.

Last but not least, reducing weight and material quantities with high strength steel is a strong and immediate lever to reduce the environmental footprint of steel solutions.

Click here to reserve your free spot.

Related link(s)

Registration

Windows version 2.0.10 of ArcelorMittal’s pre-design software for large span trusses with the European rules for steel structures, Trusses+, is now available!

This tool can be used for both verification and optimisation.

The new version includes the following modifications:

• automatic updates for the ArcelorMittal sections database
• automatic updates for new versions of the software
• bug fixes, such as input fields that did not accept negative numbers and functionality when load definitions were incomplete

Download this new version for free on our Software page.

Widely used for the construction of a variety of structures such as quay walls and breakwaters in harbours, bank reinforcements on rivers and canals, underpasses, as well as global hazard protection schemes, sheet piles have proven their performance in seismic areas in many countries around the globe.

Chile, the country that has suffered the strongest earthquakes in recorded history, provides an excellent example: Whereas its concrete-based ports have been severely damaged, the Port of Mejillones, constructed in 2003 using an HZ®/AZ® combined wall for the quay wall and AS 500 straight web sheet piles for the breakwater, has not suffered any damage throughout many heavy earthquakes with magnitudes of up to 7.7. This is the perfect example of the effectiveness of flexible sheet pile structures under extreme seismic conditions.

Nevertheless, a certain reluctance to use sheet piles in seismic areas remains common among some designers. This concern may come from their experience of conventional design methods which do not favour flexible walls in seismic areas. These design methods are usually comprised of pseudo-static calculations using the Mononobe-Okabe theory (1931).

Numerical studies and physical experiments (centrifuge testing) have shown that these conventional methods of design are overestimating the loads on retaining walls - especially in the case of flexible walls. Although EN 1998-5 allows for a reduction of the seismic action depending on the acceptable displacements (reduction factor “r”), this only applies to gravity walls and not to anchored walls such as sheet pile walls, despite their inherent ductility.

Today, powerful design tools using Finite Element Modelling (FEM) allow for dynamic calculations that can accurately predict the behaviour of the retaining walls undergoing different seismic loadings, including internal forces, deformations, increases in pore water pressures, and expected modes of failure.

Material cost savings thanks to dynamic design methods

A research project led by ArcelorMittal R&D and a study carried out by world-leading maritime consultant engineering company SENER demonstrated significant optimisation potential. In the study, a wide spectrum of cases was analysed (four water depths; four seismic accelerations; two soil conditions) that compared the conventional pseudo-static method based on EN 1998-5 using elasto-plastic subgrade reaction software and the fully dynamic advanced method using FEM software.

All of the cases studied showed substantial optimisation potential when using FEM design. The bending moments in pseudo-static design are 40% to 126% higher than those of FEM design. When considering the respective sheet pile sections, this could result in up to 50% of material cost savings using the advanced seismic design methods.

Hydrodynamic loads properly analysed contribute to additional material savings

Hydrodynamic loads are commonly considered pseudo-static and calculated according to EN 1998-5 using the Westergaard formula as a permanent load from the water during the entire duration of the earthquake. SENER used FEM and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) to calculate the impact of hydrodynamic loads on a sheet pile wall during seismic action, considering soil-fluid interactions under dynamic analysis.

Using the traditional Westergaard formula in EN 1998-5 matches the hydrodynamic loads obtained by CFD at a certain point of time during the earthquake. However, as Westergaard considers these to be permanent loads during the entire earthquake, an overestimation of its effect is evident.

The FEM calculations carried out using Plaxis 2D compared the results obtained when using the traditional Westergaard load with those obtained when using a realistic time-dependent variable load (through a dynamic load or added masses). The results showed an increase of 24.5% in the bending moment (with respect to the effects from the purely seismic action) when using the traditional Westergaard load compared to 4% when using the instantaneous load. In this case study, considering a realistic hydrodynamic load translated into a material cost saving of 14% when considering the corresponding sheet pile sections.

Brochure - Seismic design of sheet piles: economic benefits of advanced design methods

To further enhance design and project efficiencies with sheet piling solutions in areas of high seismic risk, the brochure ‘Seismic design of sheet piles: economic benefits of advanced design methods’ presents innovative design methods for extreme dynamic loading conditions in ports and waterways and other infrastructure domains.

Feel free to contact ArcelorMittal Sheet Piling for more detailed information or for assistance with the dynamic design of sheet piles using FEM.

Text:
ArcelorMittal Sheet Piling
Constructalia

Images:
ArcelorMittal Sheet Piling
Puerto Angamos

Related link(s)

Seismic design of sheet piles: economic benefits of advanced design methods