High Strength Steel as a Solution for the Lean Design of Industrial Buildings

This paper presents the actual case of an industrial building at CBMM's plant in Araxá, Brazil as an example of lean design using microalloyed steels. The structure was made mostly with microalloyed ASTM A572 steel instead of the traditional carbon manganese ASTM A36 steel. There is a metallurgical evaluation of microstructures for both steel types and their respective mechanical properties. The effect of niobium increasing strength and toughness simultaneously allowed a 22% savings in total steel consumption of this project.