ArcelorMittal Europe delivered 60 000 tonnes of rails and 1000 tonnes of sections and flat bars for the 450-km Haramain High Speed Rail project also known as the “Mecca-Medina high speed railway" inaugurated on 25 September 2018.

A 300 km/h alternative

Located in Saudi Arabia, this new rail line connects the cities of Medina and Mecca. It was planned to provide safe and comfortable transport at speeds of 300 km/h, and it will help to relieve traffic congestion on the roads.

ArcelorMittal, a worldwide reference in high speed rail supply

To build the electrified double-track line, ArcelorMittal España supplied 60 000 tonnes of 25-metre-long 60E1 – R260 rails.

ArcelorMittal steel was chosen as we are a worldwide reference in high speed rail supply. We also have five facilities around the world for rail supply, of which four are located in Europe: Rodange (Luxembourg), Dąbrowa Górnicza, Chorzów (Poland), and Gijón (Spain).

A further contribution from Distribution Solutions Iberia

The rails are not the only contribution of ArcelorMittal Europe. Downstream Solutions Iberia provided (via its long-term customer, Dicome) 1000 tonnes of sections and flat bars produced in Olaberria and Bergara to realise the overhead power cable posts between January 2014 and April 2015.

Text: ArcelorMittal Europe
Photos: Saudi Railways Organization

For the first time in Poland, Steel Day will take place in Warsaw on 14 November 2018. ArcelorMittal has partnered with Build With Steel (Buduj ze stali) to organise this full-day event at the Sheraton Warsaw Hotel geared towards investors, architects, designers, and general contractors to promote steel in the construction market.

The Steel Day programme

Steel Day will consist of talks by specialists from production, galvanising, and design companies, and lectures given by well-known architects and representatives of industry associations.

Among the speakers will be ArcelorMittal Europe – Flat Products’ Tomasz Plaskura presenting ‘Innovation in steel for the architecture of tomorrow’ and ArcelorMittal Global R&D’s Dr Renata Obiała presenting ‘Engineering fire safety of construction and creativity of designers’.

Build With Steel (Buduj ze stali)

Build With Steel is a programme developed in cooperation with steel market companies in Poland, including ArcelorMittal, with an aim to address the industry’s expectations for increasing the use of steel in the building industry.

Registration and the full programme for Steel Day is available here.

Please note: The location of this event was changed. The new location is the Sheraton Warsaw Hotel.

Text: Constructalia
Photos: Buduj ze stali

Flying over Germany's highest mountain

At 2962 metres, Zugspitze is Germany's highest mountain and highest ski resort. There, you can enjoy powdery ski slopes in the winter and hiking trails in the summer. To transport visitors to the summit, a new cable car was installed. Its construction involved HD profiles supplied by ArcelorMittal Europe – Long Products and ArcelorMittal Downstream Solutions in Neckarsulm.

The world's highest structural support for aerial tramways

After three years of planning and construction, Zugspitze’s new cable car started its ascent last winter. For this unique project, our colleagues at ArcelorMittal Europe – Long Products, together with ArcelorMittal Downstream Solutions, delivered HD profiles in steel grade S355 J2, which were used to build the structure of the cable car. The beams were produced in ArcelorMittal’s Differdange mill in Luxembourg, where they were cut to length, and the team at ArcelorMittal Downstream Solutions in Neckarsulm sold the final products to the customer.

Zugspitze's cable car holds three world records:

1. First, the particularity of this cable car is that instead of using two supports, it only has one support measuring 127 metres high making it the tallest tramway support in the world.
2. Then, the distance between the support and the mountain summit station is 3213 metres.
3. Finally, another unique feature is the height difference of 1945 metres between the valley station and the mountain summit station.

A new era

The modern cable car is a strong investment marking the beginning of a new era for the Zugspitze mountain.The 50-million-euro project has been providing visitors with maximum comfort and giving tourism a boost throughout the region.

So far, around half a million visitors are transported annually, but the historic Eibsee cable car from 1963 reached the limits of its transport capacity on peak days. The new cable car should attract about 10 percent more passengers, which means an increase for the entire, predominantly touristy, region.

The two new cabins with a sparkling new and elegant design can carry up to 120 passengers each with the floor-to-ceiling glazed open-plan cabins offering grandiose panoramic views of Germany's highest peak. They now guides alpinists, summer hikers, winter sports enthusiasts, and tourists from all over the world to the mountain top.

Text: ArcelorMittal Europe Communications
    
Photos: ©Victor Maschek / Shutterstock.com  ©Trey Waggener / Shutterstock.com

These best practice design manuals consist of a series of technical guides for engineering offices, steel fabricators, and architects that aim at facilitating the application of the Eurocodes in the design of single-storey and multi-storey steel buildings.

The presented design manuals consist of a series of technical guides facilitating the application of the Eurocodes in the design of single-storey and multi-storey steel buildings.

These design manuals are helpful for steel fabricators and engineering offices, but the presentation of the advantages and possibilities of the use of steel also applies to architects. They provide a useful source of knowledge for designers in accordance with the Eurocodes and include topics such as numerous design details, fire engineering issues, member and connection resistance calculators, etc.

The design guides 'Single-Storey Steel Buildings' and 'Multi-Storey Steel Buildings' were produced in the framework of the European project 'Facilitating the market development for sections in industrial halls and low rise buildings (SECHALO) RFS2-CT-2008-0030', which was carried out with a financial grant from the European Union's Research Fund for Coal and Steel.

The design guides were prepared under the direction of ArcelorMittal, Peiner Träger, and Corus. The technical content was prepared by CTICM and SCI, collaborating as the Steel Alliance.

ArcelorMittal Projects, ArcelorMittal Europe – Long Products Sheet Piling, and Global R&D participated in a project financed by the Dutch government to improve the design of dikes and keep the Netherlands safe from flooding.

Exploring economical and innovative solutions for safety

The Netherlands is a low-lying country protected from the sea by dikes and dunes. For decades, dike reinforcements have been installed to keep the country dry and prevent floods from happening. Due to continuously increasing safety demands and loads, one third of Dutch dikes do not meet safety requirements.

Macro-instability is one of the most common causes. It can occur when a high water level pushes against the embankment. This causes saturation of the soil and loss of stability resulting in large parts of the dike body sliding away.

When there is a lack of space due to cultivation around the dike, reinforcements to prevent macro-instability are utilised. Dikes with steel sheet pile walls are very strong and do not have to be widened thus reducing objections from residents and time-consuming judicial procedures.

Given the Dutch safety challenge, the need for cost saving has risen over the last couple of years. The government is making a tremendous effort to search for innovations that will allow for the necessary cost saving.

Taking part in the governmental study team

To investigate how the sheet pile design standards can be optimised, the government decided to finance dike tests in Eemdijk in the province of Utrecht.

The tests focussed on gaining a better understanding of the interaction between the soil and the steel sheet piles. A team consisting of ArcelorMittal Projects, ArcelorMittal Sheet Piling, and the R&D department contributed to the design process. ArcelorMittal also provided GU8N and AZ26-700 sheet piles for the tests. They were produced by ArcelorMittal's sheet piling mills in Dabrowa, Poland and Belval, Luxembourg.

The choice of the sheet pile profile in combination with the steel quality was crucial for a successful test. All dimensions of the sheet piles were extensively tested to ensure an accurate mapping of the profile characteristics. Additional tensile tests were performed to determine the exact mechanical features.

This testing program was part of the Project Transcending Exploration Macro stability (POV-M)*, which is under the Flood Protection Program (HWBP)*. The tests even gained attention at the international level from the US Army Corps of Engineers to delegates from South Korea and China.

*The sheet pile tests were executed in cooperation with Waterboard Vallei and Veluwe, Deltares, Witteveen+Bos, Fugro, and ArcelorMittal.
**A cooperation between Rijkswaterstaat (The Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment) and the water boards.

Test setup and process

At the Eemdijk test site, an oval shaped dike of 5m high, 60m long, and 40m wide was constructed in six months’ time. The dike was fitted with measuring equipment and was only used for this experiment which helped to increase knowledge of soil-structure interaction. After the tests, the dike will be completely removed. A total of three tests have been performed at the site with our sheet piles produced in Dabrowa and Belval.

Full Scale Test Green Dike: This part of the dike was constructed with a sand core and an outer cover layer of clay. The groundwater level inside the core of the levee was slowly raised to +2.80 metres, at which moment a sliding plane occurred and the dike collapsed. This test acted as a baseline measurement which was used as reference for the final test.

Pull Over Tests: Four different sheet pile configurations were installed 14 metres into the ground after which they were pulled over with a hydraulic cylinder. The objective was to see at which force level (with a maximum of 100 tonnes for AZ26-700) and which deformation the sheet pile wall would collapse. Additionally, the four configurations gave insight into the differences in the behaviour of a continuous wall and loose panels and between the elastic and plastic behaviour of the steel sheet piles.

Full Scale Test Blue Dike: This part of the dike was built similarly to the green dike apart from the reinforcement, which was over 60 metres with GU8N sheet piles. These piles were placed as triplets and staggered with lengths of 18 and 9 metres. This test was a combination of the above-mentioned tests and was the main test of the research.

A 2-metre-deep ditch was dug at the bottom of the blue dike. The groundwater level in the dike body was slowly raised and the filling of the water basin behind the levee was carried out over time. This led to a water level at the crest of the dike located at +5 metres. In addition, seven containers filled with water were placed on top of the dike, creating an extra load of 40 tonnes per container. Despite the combination of the huge loads, the steel sheet pile reinforced dike refused to give way.

By infiltrating the landward slope of the levee and lowering the water level in the ditch, the dike finally collapsed. Two million litres of water flowed out of the basin into the hinterland highlighting the success of the tests.

Saving 20-30% of steel

The dike, reinforced with steel sheet piles, finally collapsed but only after putting an extreme load on it; not collapsing the dike would have resulted in a less successful test.

Results of the different tests were in line with realistic predictions which are even more favourable than current calculation rules. This concludes that steel sheet pile walls are an extremely strong and practical solution for dike reinforcements.

Existing dike reinforcement projects cost an average of 15 million Euro per kilometre of dike. It is estimated that with these updated design rules, 20-30% of steel can be saved in new projects. With this cost savings, it is anticipated that the market share of the “innovative” steel sheet piles will increase in future dike reinforcement.

Text: ArcelorMittal Europe Communication

Copyrights: © POV Macrostabiliteit

In Italy, the Fondazione Promozione Acciaio and ArcelorMittal are very active in promoting steel as the best alternative to reconstruct damaged buildings after earthquakes.

Since the middle ages, Italy has recorded almost 100 earthquakes of varying severity. Recently in L’Aquila, in Abruzzo, Umbria and Marche the country has suffered from earthquakes that have caused hundreds of fatalities and extensive damage to constructions.

Reconstruction is therefore an imperative for the Italian community. It encompasses various challenges in terms of speed of construction, cost, versatility and of course seismic resistance.

While historically Italian architects and engineers have been taught to build with concrete, the Fondazione Promozione Acciaio (FPA) and ArcelorMittal are actively promoting steel, which offers outstanding advantages over concrete, particularly in seismic environments.

In September 2016 in Bologna and in October in Firenze, Marco Tognoni, CTS coordinator and Luca Collavoli, account manager at the Milano agency gave 2 lectures on this theme to an audience of dozens of architects and engineers.

Easy to construct and deconstruct, resistant to fire, 100% recyclable, steel is the material of choice for designing buildings that cope with earthquakes because it is inherently ductile and flexible - flexing under extreme loads rather than crushing or crumbling. Furthermore, many of the beam-to-column connections in a steel building are designed principally to support gravity loads. Yet they also have a considerable capacity to resist lateral loads caused by wind and earthquakes.

As Françoise Carrara, construction market coordinator for the South-West region points out, “these awareness initiatives towards architects and engineers are very important to contribute to the development of a culture for steel in Italy”.

Indeed, our Italian teams carry out events on a regular basis to promote steel in construction in Italy, in parallel to the training sessions that FPA organises in the regions recently affected by earthquakes.

Venice, the Jewel of the Adriatic, has been suffering from floodings for decades. To protect this UNESCO world heritage site, 7 entities of ArcelorMittal Europe contribute to the M.O.S.E. project, estimated at € 5.5 billion, which consists of the installation of 78 floodgates to protect the city.

The Acqua alta: Venice’s main threat

The Acqua alta is the exceptional tide peak that occurs periodically in the Northern Adriatic Sea. In 1966, due to this phenomenon, 80% of the city was flooded as water rose 1.94 m above its usual level, causing huge damage to the historic city and leaving thousands of people homeless. The regular floods striking the city pushed the government to find an effective solution.

ArcelorMittal comes into play

In 1984, the Italian government introduced the M.O.S.E. (Modulo Sperimentale Elettromeccanico) project. The aim was to install 78 floodgates at the Lido, Malamocco and Chioggia inlets which will temporarily isolate the Venetian Lagoon from the sea during the annual high tides. The same year, a full-size prototype of a mobile gate was tested.

The main challenge for the M.O.S.E. project was to guarantee a very long life time to the works. Thanks to the support of ArcelorMittal Global R&D from Esch-sur-Alzette, ArcelorMittal Sheet Piling has been able to supply a tailor-made solution for Venice, representing the optimal solution in terms of durability, cost-efficiency and on-site feasibility as well as complying with the project’s requirements.

In 2004, 150,000 tonnes of sheet piles and tubes up to 50,3 m long were ordered from Long Products’ Belval and Differdange sites. ArcelorMittal’s AZ and HZ/AZ sheet piles were found to be the fastest and most cost-conscious option for this project.

They were used to build:

• retaining walls,
• quay walls
• dry docks (to build the caissons for the foundations),   
• and to protect the foundations of the sluices built at each inlet, allowing boats to enter and leave the lagoon when the gates are up.
  
  

Sheet piles have also been used for temporary structures as they can be extracted easily and reused.

BD Projects delivered 500 spirally welded foundation pipes produced in its Dintelmond mill in The Netherlands. All pipes have been delivered in one piece over 40 meters to meet the highest retaining requirements. All hot rolled coils specified in high steel grades and thicknesses above 22 mm., are coming from the ArcelorMittal Europe – Flat Products mill in Bremen, Germany.                                                                                                     

To communicate on its involvement in the project, ArcelorMittal Sheet Piling invited 21 European journalists for a Belval-Venice press trip in 2010. After a visit to the Belval mill to understand how sheet piles are produced, they had the opportunity to visit the site in Venice, where 135,000 tonnes of the sheet piles had already been delivered at the time.

ArcelorMittal Ringmill and Industeel put the finishing touches to the project

The impressive gates, measuring 20 m high, 20 to 30 m wide and with a 5 m thickness, were successfully tested in 2013. ArcelorMittal Ringmill delivered the 254 rings, essential part of the system, as they help the gates to lift. The rings are rolled by ArcelorMittal Ringmill in Seraing (Belgium) and are made of superduplex F53, produced by Industeel in Le Creusot, from steel blocks with a 500 mm diametre.

The M.O.S.E. system is operational since 2016, protecting the city for the 100 coming years. Thanks to ArcelorMittal, your grandchildren will be able to appreciate the beauty of Venice.

Visit our Product page on Sheet Piles!

Be it in the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, or another European country, ArcelorMittal’s steel is used to build many bridges throughout Europe and across its borders. This time, it is in France that a bridge was built with our steel, with all the beams provided by ArcelorMittal Eurostructures Beam Finishing Centre in collaboration with ArcelorMittal Distribution Solutions.

From old to new

Next to Dunkirk, the gateway linking the towns of Petite-Synthe and Fort Mardyck to Saint Pol sur Mer has been closed to traffic for 5 years. The old bridge, made of reinforced concrete, was built in 1977 and demolished in 2011 for safety reasons due to one of its supports being damaged.

Connecting people

Since April 2016, the new “Triangle bridge” made with our steel has been opened for traffic. This gateway is a major traffic route for the Dunkirk area as it helps connecting 4 public transport lines which had to be removed during construction. Measuring 116 metres long, the new bridge includes:

• A double lane for cars
• A “green” lane for bicycles
• A pavement for pedestrians

Steel and concrete

To build the new Triangle bridge, the best solution was to opt for a concrete-steel mixed structure. The new bridge is composed of a weatherproof concrete floor slab with acoustic insulation. Steel was chosen for the support beams due to its efficiency and for its aesthetic and economical properties. S460M steel is economically beneficial for that type of application. Indeed, the weight of the structure can be reduced with a low price increase, its carbon rate is very low and welding doesn’t require pre heating.

Hand in hand collaboration

Eurostructures in Luxembourg was chosen by the customer Eiffage TP to provide 32 metre-long HEB and HEM 600 beams. Eiffage TP is well-known for realising prestigious civil engineering structures (the Millau Viaduct, the Montparnasse tower, the Channel Tunnel …).

For the assembly, Eurostructures partnered with the team of Distribution Solutions (DSI) in Yutz, France. This Distribution Solutions team was in contact with the customer’s supervising office, checking compliance with the specifications:

• Accordance with the EN1090 standard (specific to steel structure/bridges)
• Accordance with EXC4 execution class (specific to special structures such as nuclear power stations and large-span bridges)
• Accordance with  the ISO3834 standard which specifies the level of quality required for fusion welding
• Traceability

Text:
ArcelorMittal Europe Communication

Pictures:
© www.lavoixdunord.fr and
© ArcelorMittal