Structured steel plates

This article contains information about a new structure surface of the steel sheet metals, provided by three-dimensional hexagonal "honeycombs". Some mechanical properties were investigated, such as bearing capacity sandwich structured steel sheets, their possible application in building construction, advantages in comparison with the flat steel sheets. According to the research, the structured sheet metals can bear a several times higher force than the flat plate. It makes possible to use a such kind of structured plates in building, for example, as an alternative to thin-walled lightweight steel flat profiles. The article describes also the difficulties in production process of this cell-structured sheets. The calculation was conducted in FEM- program Abaqus: plates dimensions are 400x400 mm with different cell orientation. Four plate types were tested: the flat plates and structured sheets - with cell rotation 0 °, 45 °, 90 °. The deflection values of plates with the same external load were established