Adding value to traditional carbon steel construction

In this interview, Brad Doudican, Senior Structural Engineer at Advantic, tells AZoM why they started using Strongwell’s FRP materials as an alternative to carbon steel.

Tell us a bit about Advantic and your work?

Advantic is a design-build company focused on improving the construction industry by providing turnkey structural solutions through the use of proven composite materials.

We recognize that advanced materials are often perceived to have a high cost. Our practice is to provide an early business case to assess total installation and life cycle costs to help us determine if advanced materials are a good fit.

Time is precious ; we don’t want to waste yours or ours.

How did you make the decision to start using Strongwell’s FRP materials?

Advantic met with the leadership of several national pultruded material suppliers and found that the best alignment of vision and culture is with the Strongwell team.

Strongwell has decades of industry experience, strong engineering and research capability, and a broad product line.

Additionally, Advantic was impressed with Strongwell’s commitment to manufacturing excellence and rigorous quality control from raw materials to delivered goods. Strongwell has been and continues to be a vital partner in the growth of Advantic.

How do Strongwell’s FRP materials add value to traditional carbon steel construction?

Products made by Advantic with Strongwell’s FRP material can often be fully installed faster than carbon steel construction and with cost savings of between 20% and 40%.

Can Strongwell’s FRP materials replace traditional carbon steel construction?

While FRP materials cannot replace carbon steel in all applications, FRP is a viable option to replace secondary steel and miscellaneous.

This includes mezzanines and walkways, stairs, towers, walkways, ladders, pipe racks and framing.

What advantages and benefits does using FRP bring to your work?

FRP materials offer many advantages such as:

• Corrosion resistance
• Lightweight
• High resistance
• Low maintenance and low conductivity

Some of the main benefits that FRP materials bring to our work are that they are safer, lighter, and faster to install.

Can you tell us about some case studies where you have used Strongwell materials?

Recently, we completed some work on the pipe supports using Strongwell’s FRP materials. This allowed us to install the new pipe support 3.5 times faster than a steel equivalent.

The materials are lightweight and require no welding, so the steel team loves to install them.

Another example is a wastewater treatment plant that recently used our materials as an alternative to steel. They saw right away that no maintenance was required, cut delivery time by 50%, and was 55-75% lighter than steel.

In most of the case studies where Strongwell’s FRP materials were used, they eliminated hot work, provided significant savings over steel, and required no maintenance.

What do FRP materials mean for the future?

Until recently, FRP materials were positioned as a more expensive option to buy, but having low to no maintenance costs going forward.

Today, businesses see the benefits of lower installation cost today and lower maintenance cost in the future.

As the word spreads that companies can achieve savings of 20-40% when installing FRP materials compared to traditional building materials, the overall impact on the productivity of the construction industry could be. huge.

Where can our readers go to find out more?

To learn more about Advantic and its capabilities, please visit www.advanticllc.com and more information on Strongwell’s FRP materials at www.strongwell.com.

About Brad Doudican

Dr. Brad Doudican, PE, is a Senior Structural Engineer for Advantic, a structural solutions company focused on providing advanced composite materials to the construction industry.

Brad has significant experience in both conventional professional structural engineering with institutional and industrial clients, as well as advanced aerospace composite design and analysis experience with the United States Department of Defense. Dr. Doudican helped lead the creation of Advantic in 2013.