St.

Peter’s College
Sabayle St., Iligan City
College of Engineering
Civil Engineering Department

Steel Design
Activity 1
Definition of Terms

Instructions: Read the given problem below. You may write it in a clean and plane bond paper (but it
should be in the same layout with this file – with boarder and header) or you may edit this file and
encode your answers here. Take a picture of your answer or attach a file. Upload it to our Moodle
Classroom.

Task:
List down at least 50 terms related to Steel Design course and give a definition of each term.

1. Beam – Any member which can span a gap and resist loads in bending.
2. Axial Load – A load, in tension or compression, straight along a member.
3. Bending moment – Defined as (force x distance) it is a situation that tends to bend structural
members.
4. Blind Pop Rivets – These are rivets which do not have a hole from the inside to out after fixing.
5. Bolts and Nuts – Most steel structures are fastened together on site by nuts and bolts.
6. Bi-axial Bending – A steel member can be bent in one open plane, and simultaneously be bent at 90
degrees, so is bent about both axis.
7. Bracing – Steel members need to be kept in the right geometry to resist loads.
8. Cantilever – Members which is only fixed at one end, carrying, for example, an overhang.
9. Bridges – Are mostly useful for crossing rivers, valleys, or roads by vehicles but people have also
used bridges for a long time for walking.
10. Cladding – The external envelope of the building, particularly of the walls.
11. Codes and Standards – Steel frames are designed to various national and international codes.
12. Column – Any vertical member which resists an axial load.
13. Containers – International shipping is usually by container. 40-foot and 20-foot containers are the
most common. These can take items 11.9 or 5.8m long, and this dictates the size of members.
14. Combined axial and bending loads – A member can be in compression or in tension, and at the
same time, be bent.
15. Crane – Overhead travelling crane. Electric overhead travelling crane (EOT). A lifting device
which can be installed in a building.
16. Eaves – The sides of a building which are horizontal, and often have a gutter.
17. Composite Decking – Decking on which concrete is to be poured can serve first as formwork, to
make the shape that the concrete must take, without too much sagging; but the decking can have a
number of deformities formed into it, and these serve as shear connectors, bonding the steel deck and
the concrete together, making them stiffer and stronger.
18. Elastic Design – In this method of design, the steel remains ‘Elastic’, that is to say that it never
reaches yield stress with factored load applied.
19. Flashing – Edges of sheets, at the corners, around doors, above a masonry wall and so on are
usually covered with a profiled steel sheet called flashing.
20. Frames – Frames make up the structural skeleton of a building, and the purlins and the side rails are
fixed to the frames with bolted cleats. Frames are usually spaced at regular distances along the length of
building.
21. Fiberglass – Used for finishing of walls, decoration, and renovation of walls and ceilings and as a
fire protection. It can be also painted. Scrim is a reinforcing fabric made from continuous filament yarn
in an open mesh construction.
22. Gable Posts – The Gable end of a building can be very wide, and gable posts are needed to resist
wind loads, to support sheeting or masonry.
23. Gable End – Usually a building has two long sides which is horizontal, but the roof usually has a
slope, or two slopes, to drain rainwater down to the to the gutter on one side, or to 2 gutters, one either
side.
24. Hangar Doors – These are big wide sliding doors. They are often mounted on multiple tracks, so
that they can open into a stack, giving a wide opening.
25. Hangar (Hangers) – The origin of the word ‘Hangar’ is a Northern French dialect word for a cow
pen or barn.
26. Hoist – A lifting device which can be installed in a building to lift weights. A hoist can be
suspended from a strong point in a building; or it can be on a trolley on a monorail, running in a straight
line anywhere in the building. A hoist can be manual or electric.
27. Haunches – Steel inserts, usually triangular in shape, which are used to make connections between
beams, often at the connections of rafters to stanchions, but can be used at any beam-to-beam
connection.
28. I Beam – have a variety uses in the structural steel construction industry. They are often as critical
support trusses, or the main framework, in the buildings. Steel I beams ensure a structure’s integrity
with relentless strength and support.
29. Insulation – used in buildings and in manufacturing processes to prevent heat loss or heat gain.
30. Joist – A light beam. Often joists are the secondary members carrying floor loads to the main
structural frames.
31. LCA – Lifecycle Assessment.
32. Load Factor LF – Steel is designed to specified loads with an added safety factor to ensure that it
does not fail under its design loads. Under current British standards, live loads are augmented by 60%
(LF1.6) and wind and self-weight loads augmented by 40% (LF 1.4). Other codes have slightly different
load factors.
33. Louvers – These are vents in the walls of buildings, usually with inclined slats to the ground, so that
the area used by workers gets ventilated.
34. Mega Door – In an aircraft or ship building hangar, where the whole width is required to be open at
the same time, and where there is no space for outriggers, then buy a REID steel hangar with a mega
door fitted.
35. Loading – All buildings are designed to resist loads.

36. Mobile Elevating Work Platform MEWP – A device mounted on 4 wheels with a hydraulically
operated extending boom with a caged work platform at the top of it.
37. Nuts and Bolts – Are used for joining wood in heavy wood construction (roof trusses and rafters),
fastening heavy wood structures to iron constructions, connection of parts on iron construction.
38. Packs – Steel is manufactured to fairly close tolerances, but not to precise tolerances. It is normal in
a steel structure that some misfit of members may occur.
39. Overhead Door – This is a door made of a number of a wide steel panels joined together
horizontally.
40. Plastic Hinge – When a steel is stressed beyond its elastic limit, it can bend plastically with no loss
of strength; the place in a beam where this happens is a ‘plastic hinge’.
41. Plastic Design – Steel when overstressed will stretch or compress or bend permanently with no loss
of strength (this permanent deformation is ‘plastic’ deformation).
42. Pop Rivets – These are rivets which are pressed into a drilled hole, and are then squashed into a
shape with a special tool from the outside, squeezing 2 skins of sheeting together (used for side laps in
sheeting).
43. Prop – Any vertical member which supports a frame and carries axial load downwards.
44. Portal Frame – A Frame where the rafters are strongly connected to the outer columns (or
stanchions), Only blind rivets should be used.
45. Propped Portal – A portal frame can span effectively over spans of 5m to 60m or so, but it
becomes heavier with bigger spans
46. Purlins and Rails – The sheeting carries the climatic loads and any other loads applied to the
envelope of the building and is fixed onto purlins (on the roof) and onto rails (side rails or end rails) on
the walls.
47. Radius of Gyration – A measure of the resistance of a member to buckling under axial load,
measured in cm.
48. Rafters – The bits of frames which carry the roof loads.
49. Ridge Capping – Where the two ends of roof sheeting come together at the apex, there is usually a
gap, which is covered by a profiled sheet capping.
50. Shear Force – A force acting on a bit of material so as to slice through it; or to make it deform by
lozenging.

Name: LANIEL KENNETH YU I.D. #: 2019-00212