Looking for book on basic strengthening and design methods for steel structures

[ell81Participant @ell81]

Things like – the properties of angle iron compared to flat bar, box section, design of basic steel structures like frames, stands, steel benches etc.

Nothing advanced, just the basics.

For metal fabrication. Not for building buildings, just smaller structures, all made of steel.

Thanks.

[duncan webster 1Participant @duncanwebster1]

Google for Roymech and it will give you section properties

[SillyOldDufferModerator @sillyoldduffer]

I’ve not found one!   I have 4 or 5 used in combination.  They all cover more than metal fabrications and have to be cherry picked.  They are:

Fundamentals of Engineering Science (GRA Titcomb).  Good for the basic maths and concepts:  Vectors, Parallel Forces and Forces Applied to Solid Materials

Introduction to Mechanical Design (Jefferson and Brooking).  Probably comes closest, but I can’t claim it’s ‘basic’.  Covers forces, materials, forming, fabrication, joints bolted, riveted and welded, machine frame design, shafting, coupling, keys, bearings, gearing, brakes, flywheels, belt, rope and chain drives, cams, linkages, springs, piping, containers, styling, streamlining, standardisation, and design principles (what to think about).   No worked examples.

Machinery’s Handbook.  Tabulated facts, with section properties and other values for the various girder shapes (Round, flat, I, Z, T, and C section etc)  Also formula for beams in various configurations.

Steel Designers Handbook:  How to design frameworks : simple diagrams, but lots of calculations!

Books from before 1975 tend to be less mathematical than modern ones.   Aimed more at hands-on engineers with slide rules than degree qualified designers armed with CAD.  And don’t dismiss building books because buildings are often the simple case.  Their design is close to benches, frames, and benches than machine beds, trusses, hulls and monocoque bodies!

The books I’ve listed are aimed at those working to meet requirements at minimum cost.  What’s the least amount of off-the-shelf material needed to support a 500kg lathe with a 3x safety factor?   Designing down to a price is hard work, but absolutely essential for anything other than simple projects.   But as my projects are almost all simple, I work the other way round, overspecifying the material and construction method to make use of what’s available.   Bog-standard angle-iron is plenty strong enough for most home workshop needs so triangulating a box frame to make a bench should be ‘good enough’.

A frame to convert your Hydraulic Driver into a press may not be ‘simple’.  It has to be much stronger, calling for careful attention to stresses and strains.  Simply over-engineering a press by guesstimating may use a lot of expensive metal and still break at the weak point.  The need to manage strength and cost pushes it towards formal design rather than pragmatisms.

If no-one suggests an easy book, I suggest posting a tentative design on the forum and asking us.  Push for explanations if it’s criticised and learn by Q&A.

If there is an easy book, I want one too!

Dave

 

 

 

 

[ell81]

On 4 September 2025 at 13:42 ell81 Said:

…the properties of angle iron compared to flat bar, box section

The specific items above are called ‘section properties’ and are provided for free by every manufacturer of these products.

If you require a book to teach you what the various properties mean (Young’s modulus*, second moment of area, section modulus), and the connection those properties have with how a structure behaves, the two books by JE Gordon (‘Strucutres’ and ‘Materials’) cannot be beat, even today.

* if everything you do is in steel, this is somewhat irrelevant as every piece of steel has the same Young’s modulus.

[duncan webster 1Participant @duncanwebster1]

Pedant alert, stainless steel has a lower youngs modulus than other steels

[Bob WorsleyParticipant @bobworsley31976]

I have aquired several of the catalogues published by the steel companies, and I find them far more use than text books for designing steel structures.

Structural Steelwork – Redpath, Brown & Co Ltd

Iron & Steel Catalogue – Dunlop & Ranken

Steel Construction – RA Skelton & Co

are three such, the Redpath one in particular. You don’t need to know about plastic strength, just saves a few % on the section weight, but all these have the maximum load against length for all types of section.

[Bob WorsleyParticipant @bobworsley31976]

Just done a quick search, the Redpath book like mine, 1928, 500 pages, was more than I paid, £1.95 in 1998.

 

[DC31k]

On DC31k Said

[…] * if everything you do is in steel, this is somewhat irrelevant as every piece of steel has the same Young’s modulus.

Proposed Edit:

insert the words  “To a first reasonable approximation”

.

MichaelG.

.

Ref. https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Youngs-modulus-of-various-steel-grades-and-their-relative-cost_tbl2_350297358

[Clive FosterParticipant @clivefoster55965]

Excellent though the books by J E Gordon are at providing a accessible introduction to the fundamental physics underlying stress, strain and the strength of structures they aren’t really appropriate to the OPs question. Like so many “outside your field” and “amateur’ (in the best sense of the word) they are, in this case, an example of chasing after interesting but ultimately irrelevant data. A common problem covered by many aphorisms “wood for trees”, “Parkinsons bicycle shed” et many al.

As Professor Gordon says for folk like us the important thing is stiffness. Wobbly due to deflection may be well within stress limits but it rarely does the job. If, for example, we build a table we want the top to stay put with the whole thing being firm and rigid.

Except perhaps in the case of ill placed fasteners being too close to the edge of the material such structures should never come within a country mile of material limits. So the whole problem comes down to how much deflection the various components undergo under load. For us material choice is almost irrelevant, as SoD says its about what is available, but not too heavy, and generally what won’t corrode or rot where its going.

Out in the real world most structures, outside of the aerospace industries where weight control forces seriously complex engineering, are designed with large factors of safety (ignorance may be abetter word) to ensure that materials are never normally worked at high stresses.  But error and outright howlers by the professionals are common enough. Even in apparently simple cases. See for example Why Buildings Stand Up and Why Buildings Fall down by Mario Salvadori with Mathhys Levey as co author on the second book.

About the closest most of us will ever come to structures exploiting most of a materials inherent strength are plastic mouldings. In particular the clip together breed that are just strong enough to stay in one piece and be successfully opened by pressure in exactly the right places close to the clips. Or on the flexibility side those horrible moulded in hinges that appear to have been designed on the assumption that not only are 1,000 operations is plenty but also that arranging for the lid to stay open on is unnecessary complication.

In our world it’s rarely needful to go beyond “monkey-see, monkey do” level copying with a quick mathematical safety check. There is a lot of successful stuff out there for inspiration so generally if it look right it is right.

Or we could start talking about boilers! (shudder).

Its nice to know what is all about on a maths based design level but the amount of “know” needed to escape the “little knowledge is a dangerous thing” risk is large and tedious to obtain.

Clive

[SillyOldDufferModerator @sillyoldduffer]

Another thought, I learned a lot about structures and frameworks with Meccano.

It doesn’t address issues needing calculation, like absolute strength, but, by experiment, you soon get a feel for what’s strong and weak about the various ways steel can be fixed together.   What’s good and bad about pin-joints, and the advantages of triangular cross-bracing and angle girders become apparent by doing.

Much depends on what ell81 means by ‘Nothing advanced, just the basics.’  One of my books considers triangulation in the context of a truss bridge by jumping straight into Bow’s Notation.   Incidently, the Freestudy website might be starting point.

I’m trying remember when I first learned about basic structures.  I was 14 or 15, and it was either O-Level Maths or Physics, where we were plodding through vectors and a brave soul dared ask for a real world example.   One was an aircraft flying into a cross-wind, the other was forces in a braced framework.  Trouble is we were being taught the basic maths out of context, not realising it only becomes relevant much later, at a Poly or University.  And those doing arty or practical subjects weren’t taught vectors at all!

Does ell81 need to know about vectors, youngs modulus, and sectional form etc etc etc?  Yes if he’s building structures to support a particular weight.  Probably not if he’s knocking up a bench.

Dave

 

 

 

 

 

[noel shelleyParticipant @noelshelley55608]

If it looks right, seems right and feels right, then there’s a good chance it is right ! Unless there is some good reason for the sums Etc I won’t worry to much. Noel.

[Nicholas FarrParticipant @nicholasfarr14254]

Hi, I don’t know of any books, but as far as angle iron flat bar and box sections, taking flat bar first, it will be reasonable easy to bend on the thickness, than on the width, angle iron will bend fairly easy if a load is put on the closed side of the angle, with the open side being restrained at each end, but a little less so the other way round, its strength is by the legs widths, but has less resistance to twisting. Box section has the best resistance from all directions. Providing they all have the same cross section, their strength should be much the same overall, but not always in the same applications. When I first started working, the chap I was under, used to say to me, “If you err at all, err on the strong side” that might be fine, but it can also work against you in some situations. Unless you are building something big and heavy that needs to carry a heavy or impact load, I don’t think you need to worry to much about it, just keep in mind that deeper sections will carry more load. Of course, flat bar, angle iron and box sections and channel iron, can be worked together in the same fabrication. I made mill Major milling machine stand, mostly from scrap material, it’s probably OTT as far as strength goes, but it’s very ridged, and holds the 300kg weight without any problems, and the only calculations I made were the measurements.

Regards Nick.

[BazyleParticipant @bazyle]

Maybe don’t overthink it. I was recently told how builders decide on floor beams and rafters – since all such are 2″ wide it is just xx” depth for each foot of span. Stuff the architects and engineers that was how your house as built! Trouble is I can’t remember what xx is.

[ell81]

On 4 September 2025 at 13:42 ell81 Said:

Things like – the properties of angle iron compared to flat bar, box section, design of basic steel structures like frames, stands, steel benches etc.

Nothing advanced, just the basics.

For metal fabrication. Not for building buildings, just smaller structures, all made of steel.

Thanks.

Just an offering to provide food for thought.

When you say things like “frames, stands, steel benches etc”, I can’t help but wonder whether you are tending to over think it.  I can appreciate that knowing a bit about structure design can help you to appreciate just what is going on inside a structure and help you to determine whether a component is in tension or compression, but for the things you are quoting the vast majority of things we would make in a small workshop would be way over engineered anyway.

As has already been mentioned the key to it all lies in the cross sectional area.  A flat bar flexes easily  in one direction.  Add another piece of flat at right angles and you stiffen it in that direction and get a piece of angle iron.  Put two pieces of angle iron back to back and you get a box section, which is even stiffer.  Don’t under estimate just how effective the application of a bit of common sense is.  Make a simple square frame out of angle iron, facing down to give you a flat surface to use.  Add four legs flat side out to give you a perfectly stiff and useful stand.  If you are putting a significant weight on it then simply add cross braces across all corners between the legs and the frame. For a greater load use box section for the legs.

Such a structure would easily support anything we would want to support in our home workshops.  As regards size of angle iron, if it looks right, it probably is.  If in doubt go a bit bigger but don’t go so big as the worry about the strength of the floor.

I know this all sounds way too simplistic for many but I have been involved in the construction of so many racks, stands, supports, brackets etc, etc, in machinery spaces and can say we never resorted to design theory or strength of materials.  I never felt the need to use Young’s Modulus of Elasticity, the Brunel Hardness number or even the beam equation. Things that would require a more theoretical approach would be the welding of pad eyes for lifting gear and all we would do then would be a load test with a strain gauge and hydraulic jack to ensure it would take the load to be lifted and it would be stamped with a test load.

I’m not critisising anyone for wanting to know more about something but, the only point I want to make is that common sense is the best tool you have at your disposal.  The only caveat I would add is that bolted construction would require a bit more understanding of torque on a joint but, again, the use of simple cross braces deals with that.

[Bazyle]

On Bazyle Said:

Maybe don’t overthink it. I was recently told how builders decide on floor beams and rafters – since all such are 2″ wide it is just xx” depth for each foot of span. Stuff the architects and engineers that was how your house as built! Trouble is I can’t remember what xx is.

Hope not!   New builds are supposed to follow the appropriate codes, not rule of thumb.  I’ve heard tell of a few cowboys about though, probably just a rumour!

🙂

[densleighParticipant @densleigh]

Another good source of info + worked examples is from Schaum’s Outline series.

 

‘ Theory and Problems of Strength of Materials by William Nash – published by McGraw Hill

 

Thory and over 400 worked examples just sub the figures and a calculate.

 

I used this at Uni as part of Electrical engineering course and subsequently to design and calculte beam sizes foe a shop ro support a large concret canopy over the street and two (2) floors above when we joined adjacent shop units to form a larger one.

Several pages later of calcs with ,yes a slide rule, local council could not do maths so sent toa structural consultant.  Miniscule deflection.

Also used to calculate roof beams and uprights for a 20ft span workshop.

 

You can find foc programs omn structural beams on the web – use the manufacturers data fro moments etc.

All good fun

 

But  a lot is ‘if it looks right it will be right

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