ProSteel 5

General

Hollow sections - warning!

ProSteel's hollow section calculations are only applicable to hot-finished sections. On more recent releases we print 'HF' next to the section name to emphasise this. Cold-formed sections have lower capacities and should not be substituted for hot-finished sections without explicitly checking their adequacy.

Corus supply two grades of cold-formed section, Strongbox® 235 and Hybox® 355. The Steel Construction Institute Advisory Desk note Ad271 states "... it is strongly recommended that Strongbox 235 sections should not be used in structural applications; in particular where designs must comply with building regulations and/or design codes"

Checking of Hybox 355 sections is included in releases 5.20h and later

What's a PFC?
What's an IPE?
What's an ASB?
What's an SFB?

More recent steel data files include additional section types. PFC stands for Parallel Flange Channel, a channel section in which the inner and outer faces of the flanges are parallel. See SCI Publication 210: Parallel Flange Channels - Section Properties and Member Capacities, 1996. IPE and HE are Euronorm I sections. A SFB (Slimflor Fabricated Beam) former comprises a UC section with a plate projecting 100mm either side welded on to the lower flange. An ASB (Asymmetric Beam) section is a rolled I section with the bottom flange 110mm wider than the top flange.

Column base plate sizing

A query has been raised re base plate sizing. ProSteel 2-5 calculate the base plate thickness using the minimum base plate size, which is a function of the section size and concrete strength. If you make the base larger, the additional area is ignored. This is all in accordance with Bs5950, but one user has pointed out that when designing mezzanine floors the base area is often determined by the permissible load on the subgrade below the slab, less an allowance for load dispersal through the slab. In such cases the base plate thickness should be calculated by using the actual size and actual stress under the whole plate which will give a greater plate thickness than ProSteel indicates. In such cases you will need to calculate the base plate thickness manually.

Mezzanine floor column effective lengths

Please note that the effective lengths for columns supporting internal platform (mezzanine) floors are given in Annex D Table D1. The factors rang from 0.70L to 4.00L. The ProSteel design dialog lets you type in your own effective length factor as well as selecting the standard values from the drop-down list. If you are involved in mezzanine floor design we would strongly advise you to obtain a copy of BRE Digest 437 - available from BRE Bookshop

Release 5.40k, 16 June 2010

Users who have been sent and entered a valid activation key ending in A06 or Bxx can download this release using the Miscellaneous, Check Website for Updates option within the program.

How to use the web updates facility

• Flange plate splice dimensions were clipped or missing on splice printout drawing.
• M30 bolts have been added as an option for connections and beam splices. This follows a user request; in most cases using such large bolts will not be the best option given the amount of connected material removed and the large spacing and end/edge clearance required.

Release 5.40j, 24 May 2010

• The Project Details dialog has now been enhanced so you can choose one of the four project fields as the filename on new projects.
• Twin or triple steel beams are now correctly identified in Project Manager as such
• Zero values on beam splice data are now reset to sensible defaults
• The last steel column edited serves as the default when a new one is added; if the last one had a checked section, the check was carried over but not the section size.
• Entering a number with two decimal points and no operators in a calculated field (e.g. 2.3.4) caused a lockup, now correctly handled
• Calculator erroneously stripped trailing zeroes if set to 0 decimal places; the fixed version adds a 5 decimal point button to make it obvious which version you have
• PDF margins can now be set independently of those for the current printer (separate tab on Configurations, Page Layout dialog
• Export to EuroBeam file improved (the first release of EuroBeam is now available to ProSteel users with current update cover)

Release 5.40i, 2/4 Feb 2010

• IMPORTANT: Bug fixed that could gave incorrect results with angle cleat and fin plate connections: In releases 5.40c-5.40h the bolt bearing resistance of the supported beam web was incorrectly calculated (too high x1000) so if this was the critical element of the connection, its strength would be overestimated. If the bearing resistance of the cleats/fin plate or the shear capacity of the bolt group was the limiting element then the calculation was correct.
• Auto o.w. bug: if you selected 'Auto o.w.' and the o.w. entry was not the first entry in the load table, the load data could be corrupted if you saved and reloaded the project or copied and pasted the beam - fixed
• Print Page Heading only returned a blank sheet with no heading - fixed
• If you changed a Project Text page to a User Text Page or vice versa, the menu options were not updated - fixed
• 4 Feb build The beam and post load edit dialog positions were not remembered when you closed them - fixed
• 4 Feb build Connection printouts now show some additional working

Release 5.40h, 11 Jan 2010

• This fixes a bug in earlier 5.40 releases that caused a crash on printing if you had selected cm. as the dimension unit in Configuration, Page Layout.
• If you selected 'padstone' as the bearing for one or both ends of a steel beam and entered '0' as the height, its value was changed to '5' and this appeared on the calculation sheet. '0' is now accepted and should be entered where you do not want the height shown on printouts or where it is not being calculated by reference to a 45 degree spread from the stiff part of the beam (e.g. you are using a reinforced padstone).
• In parallel with the ongoing development of our new EuroBeam program, the File, Export to EuroBeam file code has been extensively revised. Exported files from 5.40d-g will not be readable by the release version of EuroBeam. Hopefully the EuroBeam file specification is now fairly firm, but it is possible that we will need to further revise it.

5.40g was a debug version made available to a few selected users