Steel Beam Reinforcement Construction Costs 1

[Celt83]

I need to get some budgetary pricing for some steel beam reinforcing, I've reached out to a few of my contactor contacts and understandably no one wants to price something that may not be real work.

Does anyone have any rule of thumb or price per ton or ft numbers for:
- Steel Cover Plate - 3/8" thick plate
- WT welded to a bottom flange
- Coring concrete deck and adding additional shear studs to the top flange of a beam

Thanks for any info.

My Personal Open Source Structural Applications:

https://github.com/buddyd16/Structural-Engineering

Open Source Structural GitHub Group:

https://github.com/open-struct-engineer

 

[BridgeSmith]

For all of those options, the material cost is dwarfed by the labor. Your best best for the first 2 may be to try to get an estimate of the time for the welding (so many feet per hour) and typical hourly rates for field welding in your area. Keep in mind overhead welds are typically much more expensive, due to the difficultly and additional certifications that are usually required, so I recommend a cover plate narrower than the flange or a WT that's wider than the existing flange.

Also, even fillet welds parallel to the direction of stress may put the beam into a lower fatigue category. It may not, or may not be critical for your situation, but it's something pay attention to if there are a high number of significant loading cycles on the beam.

Around here, the typical cost for field welding shear studs is around $10 apiece to do a large number (3000 or more), but for smaller quantities, it could be much higher due to the high mobilization cost for the rig necessary to automatically end weld the studs. It takes a really big welder (up to 1100 amps draw for the 7/8" studs) and a bigger generator to supply the juice for the welder.

Rod Smith, P.E., The artist formerly known as HotRod10

 

[Celt83]

Thanks for the info BridgeSmith, we figured labor would trump material costs on this type of work.

I was able to get some rough labor numbers after several cold calls to some steel fabricators in our area.

My Personal Open Source Structural Applications:

https://github.com/buddyd16/Structural-Engineering

Open Source Structural GitHub Group:

https://github.com/open-struct-engineer

 

[Deker]

Would you mind sharing the relative cost of each of those options? We've tried to move away from strengthening with WT in favor of adding a Wx, preferably with flanges wider than the existing. This allows the contractor to clamp the reinforcement in place while they weld and doesn't have the same fit up issues as WT trying to match the curvature of the existing beam.

 

[Celt83]

Number ranges I got for the DC Metro area were:
$3-3.5K for the cover plate wider than the flange so no overhead weld
$7.5-8K for the WT with the web welded to the flange so overhead weld here
$2.7-3.3K for mobilization and install of about (30) studs (does not include anything for the actual slab coring operation that's a separate sub)

My Personal Open Source Structural Applications:

https://github.com/buddyd16/Structural-Engineering

Open Source Structural GitHub Group:

https://github.com/open-struct-engineer

 

[BridgeSmith]

Checking the welding quality for the studs could be difficult. The typical check for shear studs on bridge girders is to bend a few over 30^O with a sledge hammer.

Rod Smith, P.E., The artist formerly known as HotRod10