ProSteel 5

General

Hollow sections - warning!

Hollow sections can be hot finished or cold formed. HF 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"

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 calculates 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 5.41g, 10 Nov 2011

Users whose activation key ends in B11-D12 can download this release using the Miscellaneous, Check Website for Updates option within the program. How to use the web updates facility

Changes affecting item (beam/bearing/column) notes

You will see a new button to the top right of the notes pane in each of the item edit dialogs. When pressed, any notes text is redisplayed in the same editor window used for text pages. Press OK to return to the item edit dialog.

A change has been made to the way in which item notes are handled:

1. The default is as before: consecutive lines are joined together and wordwrapped where necessary. Leave a blank line to start the following text on a new line, or two blank lines to leave a blank line before continuing. In this mode plain text only (no font changes or effects) is supported.
2. What's new is that if the notes text you enter contains any of the valid text page tags (e.g. <n> to switch to the notes font) no wordwrapping is applied; any line breaks you enter are preserved and the text is displayed or printed using the same routine used for text pages, with the tags being handled as elsewhere.

Further connection checking and design changes

In release 5.42f we tightened up the calculation of bolt bearing resistances, calculating a reduced resistance where the end or edge distance was less than 2d. We are now calculating the vertical and horizontal loads arising from the load being carried by the connection, and from these the direction of the resultant load. The bolt end distance is now taken as the distance from the bolt centre measuring along this line until the edge of the beam web or cleat/plate is reached. This change has the effect of increasing the bolt bearing capacity where the end or edge distance is less than 2d. Where the end and edge distances are >=2d nothing changes.

Other changes

• The Setup program now asks whether it should create a ProSteel 5 desktop icon
• The flange plate beam splice now shows the splice moment and shear capacity
• Flange plate beam splice web plate bolt capacity was slightly overestimated for splices with four or more pairs of web bolts
• The correct connection cleat/plate thicknesses and lengths were not written into EuroBeam export files
• Placement of connection drawings within bounding frame has been improved.
• Angle cleat connection capacity with one row of bolts was erroneously shown as -3kN
• Text page editor didn't show scroll bars - fixed
• Text page editor now includes Use/Add Standard Note buttons as for item edit dialogs.
• Tiny change to calculator: if you enter a number and press [Enter] or '=', the number is copied to the register as entered.

Release 5.41f, 23 Aug 2011

• Enhancements and bug fixes

• Handling of errors relating to OLE pages has been improved
• You can now add notes to beam splice calculations
• The Cascade windows on loading a project option has been removed
• The Catalogue Project Files menu option has been moved to the file menu
• An additional button below the parameter list in the Page Heading Dialog toggles between the display of the parameters themselves (.e.g. %D) and their current values (e.g. 18 Aug 2011)

Connection checking and design changes

• If you are checking an independent connection and press one of the change section buttons on the first page of the edit dialog, the steel selection dialog now defaults to the last selected section.
• The connection edit dialog is now resizeable. A new field on the first page lets you add notes as elsewhere. The second page now includes a small drawing of the connection
• You can now enter a load of '0' on an independent connection. If you do this, the capacity of the connection will be calculated.
• Several bolt group capacity checks have been moved from their 'Green Book' positions to make the checks more logical.
• Connection printouts now finish with a summary of the different checks and capacity for each one where applicable.

Release 5.41e, 2 May 2011

Two minor fixes:

• For columns, any user-entered moment was correctly evaluated but shown on the summary calculation as being in kip-in (US units) rather than kNm - fixed
• File, Export as EuroBeam file now correctly handles projects with B/F loads (previously such loads were duplicated within EuroBeam if you had selected Dead+Live Load entry in SuperBeam)

Release 5.41d, 18 Jan 2011

• Wrong bolt size could be shown on flange plate splice calculation printout (calculation was correct)
• Range check error on selecting Configuration, Window Colours fixed
• OLE page error handling has been enhanced
• OLE data was not exported when you selected File, Save as XML EuroBeam file. Fixed: note that EuroBeam OLE data will in future be saved as ProjectName.eub.ole. This exported data will only be picked up by the next EuroBeam release