Steel Buildings in Europe

Part 2: Concept Design 2 - 23 The five-storey Steel Centre in Liege, Belgium is an innovative office building designed to achieve a high level of energy efficiency. It is 16 m  80 m on plan and consists of an off-centre line of in ternal columns to create beam spans of 9 m and 7 m. The longer span seconda ry members are 500 mm deep and are placed at 3 m spacing, which support a composite floor. The secondary members use IPE330/ IPE 300 sections to create cellular b eams with regular 400 mm diameter openings. The form of construction is shown in Figure 3.10. The 9 m span prim ary cellular beam s are the sam e depth and use HEB 320/ HEA 320 sections. A fire engin eering analysis was carried out to d emonstrate that th e composite beams coul d be unprotected except for those connected to the colum ns. The columns are concrete filled circular hollow sections, which are unprotected and achieve the required fire resistance, lead ing to a considerable reduction in fire protection costs. The build ing is suppo rted on piles because of the poor gro und conditions in this former industrial area. The low se lf weight of the structure (< 350 kg/m 2 ) and of the curtain walling system was important in minimising the loads on the piles.