This year, Atlas Tube exhibited at both the North American Steel Construction Conference (NASCC) on April 17-19 in St. Louis and the ASCE Structures Congress on May 2-4 in Pittsburgh. Both conferences were well attended, with NASCC attracting nearly 3800 engineers, students, service centers, fabricators, detailers and contractors, and Structures Congress attracting around 1000 structural engineers, faculty and students.

As always these shows offer Atlas Tube great opportunities to engage members and customers of the steel industry in a meaningful conversation about Hollow Structural Sections (HSS). This year was special since we had a new and innovative development in the HSS industry to talk about.

On April 11, 2013, ASTM published a new specification: ASTM A1085 “Standard Specification for Cold-Formed Welded Carbon Steel Hollow Structural Sections.” This specification was developed over the course of several years by members of the HSS and steel industry as well as practicing structural engineers and structural engineering professors. This specification was developed to raise the level of performance of HSS used in building and bridge construction.

The main benefits of HSS produced to the new ASTM A1085 are:

• Tighter material tolerances and a single minimum yield stress of 50 ksi. – This allows HSS sections to be more efficient and have an increased strength to weight ratio, which leads to more economical designs
• Maximum specified yield stress of 70 ksi – This is an expected feature of structural steel used in seismic load resisting systems. Having a cap on the yield stress makes the expected strength of HSS more predictable and prevents penalizing the rest of the structure with large over-strength factors.
• Standard requirement for Charpy notch toughness – Structural steel used in dynamically loaded structures such as bridges or buildings subjected to seismic loads needs to be both tough and ductile. Having this base CVN requirement in the A1085 spec gives assurance that HSS produced to this spec will provide this level of performance.

At the NASCC and the Structures Congress, design engineers greeted this news with great enthusiasm. The American Institute of Steel Construction (AISC) and the Steel Tube Institute (STI) provided a flyer at these shows to promote and educate about ASTM A1085.

I encourage you to learn more about this new HSS specification by visiting our website or by visiting the AISC’s HSS page.