Steel construction

Architectural Science Review, Dec, 2005

Steel Designers' Handbook, by Branko Gorenc, Ron Tinyou, and Arun Syam. UNSW Press, Sydney 2005 (our copy from Unireps, University of New South Wales, Sydney 2052). 413 pp., ill., index. Pbk., Price: $A 75.00.

The first edition of this textbook was published in 1970. The Fifth edition was reprinted once, with revisions, and the Sixth edition was reprinted twice. We have reviewed the Second Edition (ASR Vol. 16, No. 3, p. 68) and the Fourth Edition (ASR Vol. 25 No. 2, p. 45). The book was originally the work of Gorenc, a practising designer of steel structures, and Tinyou, a member if the staff of the University of New South Wales. Syam, a member of the staff of the Australian Steel Institute, joined the authorship team for this edition.

This design handbook is based on the current Australian Steel Structures Standard, AS 4100, and the Australian Loading Code Structural Design Actions, AS/NZS 1170. The design of steel structures is basically the same in all Western countries, but there are national differences which are important when the design is submitted for approval to building authorities. Hence the importance of this authoritative Australian textbook, two of whose authors, Gorenc and Syam, have served on numerous committees of Standard Australia.

After an introduction defining the basic concepts of this code, such as the Serviceability Limit State, the book is divided into 9 chapters: materials and design requirements, design actions, structural analysis, beams and girders, compression and beam-column members, tension members, connections, plastic design, and structural framing. This is followed by four appendices: a bibliography which includes, in addition to the references, lists of the standards and codes, of computer software, of steel suppliers' websites, and of industry association websites; a derivation of the principal formulae of the elastic design methods; and forty pages of design aids, mostly in tabular form. There is also a useful 5-page list of conversion factors and a very necessary 12-page list of the notation used in the Code and in this book.

This edition became necessary when the steel structures standard AS4100 was revised in 1998. The other changes are relatively minor. The major change in structural steel design occurred when the limit states design method was introduced; this is not as logical or firmly based on mathematics as the previous elastic design method, but it allows a substantial reduction in the factor of safety, and therefore the cost, because the objective of structural design is to prevent failure, rather than limit the maximum stress in the structure. The authors point out that their book should be read in conjunction with the standard (AS4100) which contains a commentary on the code. Evidently it would not have been helpful to reprint this.

This Seventh Edition maintains the high standard of Gorenc and Tinyou's book, which has no real competitors for the design of Australian steel structures.