LIGHT STEEL FRAME SYSTEM: MAIN BENEFITS AND FEATURES

The principle on which Off Site Construction is built is the industrialisation of processes and building solutions, that increasingly result in factory processing, speeding up and optimising all worksite activities, as we have pointed out in other articles.

To help you understand this concept better, we will use a perfect example: cars. Let’s imagine the evolution of the car or shipbuilding sector, for example. In both cases, everything has changed: the materials used and, obviously, the processes. In fact, the industrialised methodology, which has increasingly taken root, has consequently resulted in a change in the end product.

Today’s cars and ships are not the same as they used to be; the vehicles and ships we have are the result of an important evolution that has made them more technologically advanced, eco-friendly and built with industrial processes.

In the same way, we hope that modern buildings can also be thus transformed. It is unthinkable that the same construction methods used in the 1970s, for example, are still valid today. There have been innovations that have also affected the construction sector and that have decisively changed both the way of producing and the way of working.

In fact, in this respect we can mention the Light Steel Frame (LSF) system, or, as it is also known, the light steel construction system.

The Light Steel Frame system, like all dry construction systems in general, is an integral part of Off Site technologies and can be applied to various construction methods and types.

If you would like to learn more on this subject, read the article “Changing construction: modern building techniques, Light Steel Frame and dry construction”.

Not all companies are already applying steel construction systems - specifically the Light Steel Frame system; this is why Manni Green Tech has decided to offer concrete support to builders and designers who instead have the intention of changing their way of conceiving construction, for more efficient and higher-quality worksites.

Features of the Light Steel Frame

Manni Green Tech operates in the prefabricated structure market, offering an integrated construction system for building modular and scalable buildings, using for this purpose light steel structures that can be combined with hot laminated steel structures.

Prefabricated buildings, which integrate dry construction with the light steel frame construction system, are fast to execute, offer more safety at the worksite, reduce the environmental impact, guarantee energy efficiency and acoustic comfort. In addition, all buildings built with this technique are earthquake-proof.

We would like to highlight the following main features of the Light Steel Frame system:

• The possibility to adapt to various architectural solutions;

• The construction of buildings with high energy, acoustics and safety performances in case of earthquakes and fire;

• The industrialisation of the system, which guarantees integration of the production system and the design, for excellent quality;

• The lightness of dry construction combined with the high durability of steel constructions.

As we have pointed out many times before, the Light Steel Frame system is the future of the construction industry. Let’s see how the technical literature has defined Light Steel Frame or LSF:

a construction system based on structures made up of cold-shaped steel elements, manufactured by cold bending or profiling of thin steel sheets.

There are, in turn, two construction methods that can be applied depending on the needs of the design:

• Platform system: when the structure is built floor by floor, so that the lower floor can serve as support for the construction of the upper floor. The walls are not continuous and the loads are transferred to the walls of the lower floor through the steel structure;

• Ballon system

  : 

  the walls are continuous for more than one floors and the loft is connected to them. In this system, the loads pass from the upper floor to the lower floor, without affecting the loft’s structure.

What are the advantages of this building technique?

One of the main advantages of the Light Steel Frame system as a building technique is the very low, almost zero, need for maintenance. As time goes by, many building materials deteriorate. This is not the case with a steel construction system.

Steel preserves its technical and structural features for its entire lifecycle; this means that it is a material particularly suitable to design uses with exposed elements and those left exposed to weathering.

Moreover, thanks to its physical characteristics, steel is not under attack from micro-organisms, such as mould, fungi and bacteria, and is also immune to humidity. This makes it the perfect long-lasting and effective building material.

Here are some other advantages of the Light Steel Frame system:

• Speed of construction and, therefore, compliance with delivery times;

• The possibility of not using large lifting equipment, as the material is very light;

• Considerable water savings during the construction phase, a fundamental element for traditional construction methods;

• Ease of transport and traceability

• Space savings thanks to the solutions of high-performing and compact walls that make it possible to increase the net floor area, minimising waste

What can we do for your project?

Thanks to the know-how and the many decades of experience in steel constructions around the world, the engineering division of Manni Green Tech has developed a customised and optimised Light Steel Frame building system, based on the use of a single building component - an optimised section C-shaped profile - the connections of which have been specifically studied and modelled, so that the entire process, from design to production and assembly, is extremely precise and guarantees the best performance.

The Manni Green Tech System is a complete building system, integrated with the best dry construction components (slabs, ISOPAN sandwich panels, insulating layers) all the way to the green roof and the equipment with advanced technologies (IoT) by Maetrics, a Manni Group Company. The project is studied and defined at performance level with the Customer and the General Contractor, for the best results that guarantee everyone’s satisfaction.

The uniqueness of Manni Green Tech engineering also lies in its capacity to have, where necessary, cold-formed steel elements with heavy structural steelwork structures coexist and optimised in a single structure; this is done thanks to the experience in all types and kinds of worksites that makes it possible to meet the design needs of all types of buildings.

In fact, our technical office can offer support to designers and to undertakings from the very first stages of architectural design, to then go on to the Detailed Technical Design phase and all designs necessary for onsite building.

Our systems, in fact, can also be prefabricated off-site, thus preassembled in the factory in wall, floor or roof elements that are mounted very fast and easily by the workers at the worksite.

The buildings that can be built vary from residential to commercial - for tourism rather than for industry - adapting the load-bearing structures and the envelope solutions to the specific needs of the project, without lighting or height limits