Linyi Wanhui Metal Materials Co., Ltd.
What is the difference between heavy steel structure and light steel structure?
Oct 10,2025
There is no unified standard for determining whether a steel structure is made of heavy steel or light steel, and many experienced designers or project managers often cannot fully understand it.
There is no unified standard for determining whether a steel structure is made of heavy steel or light steel, and many experienced designers or project managers often cannot fully understand it. However, we can fully consider and judge some data:
1. Workshop crane lifting weight: greater than or equal to 25 tons, can be considered as heavy steel structure.
2. Steel consumption per square meter: greater than or equal to 50KG/㎡, can be considered as heavy steel structure.
3. Main component steel plate thickness: greater than or equal to 10mm, with less use of light steel structures.
In addition, there are some standard values for steel structures, such as cost per square meter, weight of large components, span, structural type, eaves height, etc., which can provide empirical data when determining whether the factory building is made of heavy steel or light steel. Of course, many buildings are made of light steel and heavy steel. But some can definitely be said to be heavy steel, such as petrochemical plant facilities, power plant buildings, large-span sports venues, exhibition centers, high-rise or super high-rise steel structures.
In fact, there is no mention of heavy steel in the specifications and technical documents. In order to distinguish the steel structure of lightweight houses, ordinary steel structure can be referred to as "ordinary steel". Due to the wide range of ordinary steel structures, including various types of steel structures, regardless of load size, and even many contents of light steel structures, the technical specifications for lightweight building steel structures only specify some more specific content based on their "light" characteristics, and the scope is limited to single-layer portal frames.
Light steel is also a relatively vague term, which can generally be understood in two ways. The current "Code for Design of Steel Structures" (GBJ 17-88) Chapter 11 "Round Steel, Small Angle Steel Light Steel Structures" refers to light steel structures made of round steel and angle steel below L45 * 4 and L56 * 36 * 4.
From this, it can be seen that the difference between light steel and heavy steel in steel structures lies not in the weight of the structure itself, but in the weight of the enclosure materials, but in the design concept of the structure, they are consistent.
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