Steel construction (Racking)

Steel construction is a part of civil engineering in which mainly steel is used in the construction of load-bearing structures. Sheet metal, structural steel pipes and steel girders are bolted, welded or riveted together to form a common supporting structure. The gusset plate, which connects the individual members of a supporting structure, is an elementary part of steel construction. The advantages of steel construction are the short planning and construction time as well as the flexible design. The flexible design is based on the use of lightweight, slim and resilient components as well as the optimum degree of prefabrication and the resulting short assembly time.
Since the steel construction method exposes the components to the weather and safety must be maintained at all times, the components must be protected against galvanization and corrosion by a surface coating. Today, already 11% of the collected structural steel from quarries is directly reused in new buildings, the rest is reprocessed as secondary raw material into high quality steel, therefore steel construction is optimally used for sustainable building.