HERA is currently working on assessing the fire performance of a typical New Zealand light steel frame floor of a multi-storey building with the aim to provide input into the fire section of the resulting design guide. As the first part of the research, an overseas experimentally-tested floor slab has been investigated numerically by advanced…
The Sustainable Steel Council (SSC) was formed in 2009 to promote the use of steel as a sustainable building material to the various stakeholders within New Zealand’s building and property industries. Following the formation of Metals New Zealand (MNZ) in 2011, SSC supports the wider MNZ activity on the sustainability of metal products. Since 2011,…
HERA has been alerted to the fact that there is a list of AS/NZS obsolete standards posted on Standards New Zealand’s web site. Among them are some standards on aluminium and stainless steel – see their website for further details. Sep252015 Update shared by our General Manager Dr Stephen Hicks Access Standards NZ website to find out more…
The annual ArchEng workshop continues to go from strength to strength, thanks to co-operation with industry associations such as HERA. A CCANZ initiative that began in 2011, it expanded this year to involve the timber and steel sectors. Now that all three major building materials, concrete, steel and timber, are involved, ArchEng is poised to…
An error has been found in HERA Report R4-103. This publication is no longer for sale. In the report, the equation given for finding the plastic neutral axis when it lies in the web is incorrect. In terms of an alternative guide, SCI Publication 355 provides the latest design guidance on beams with web openings. Sep182015…
The Aotea Event Centre was a well selected venue to the second Steel Innovations Conference during Metals Week held on the 1 – 4 September. First launched in 2013, the biannual Steel Innovations Conference provides a forum for structural engineers, steel industry representatives, academics and students to share the latest knowledge in the design and…
Temperature-time (T-t) curves and temperature contour plots due to the ISO 834 standard fire loading curve for typical New Zealand composite floors have been calculated and presented in tabulated format. The temperatures in 10 minute intervals up to the requested fire resistance rating have been reported for the slab top face and along the thinnest…
As the new design standard for composite construction AS/NZS 2327 nears completion, consideration is being paid to what software tools will be needed by designers. Our General Manager Structural Systems Dr Stephen Hicks has encouraged Arup’s software house Oasys to implement the new AS/NZS 2327 within their Compos programme, which enables users to design composite beams…
As an extension to the Australian Journal of Structural Engineering paper that was reported in last month’s HERA News, the paper entitled ‘Australasian Advances in Steel & Composite Structures to Enhance Cross-Border Practice’ was delivered by Prof. Brian Uy (CIES Director and Chair of IABSE-Australia) at the 17th Association of Structural Engineers of the Philippines…
A number of journal papers have recently been published that have been co-authored by our General Manager Structural SystemsDr Stephen Hicks. They’re now available to members from our library. Details for each of these papers are given below. Safety Factors for the Resistance of Steel Sections Australian Journal of Structural Engineering, by Kang WH, Hicks…
Beams with web openings can include cellular beams fabricated from rolled sections or plate girders with circular or rectangular openings cut in the webs. Typical long-span floor beams of this nature are designed to act compositely with the floor slab, which greatly increases their load carrying capabilities. Authored by Prof. R Mark Lawson of Surrey…
HERA is delighted to announce its success in obtaining research funding from the 2015/16 Building Research Levy Investment Programme for the project entitled “Specific Design for Multi-storey Light Steel Framed Housing”. Working closely with the National Association of Steel-framed Housing (NASH), whom will also be funding this initiative, the project is in response to the…