Tuesday, May 4, 2010

4,000 tons of steel for better parking in Moscow

ThyssenKrupp Steel Europe AG is supplying around 250,000 square meters of Hoesch Additive Floor for 20 parking garages in Moscow. That's roughly 4,000 tons of steel. The steel profiles are to be delivered over the course of the next twelve months.

The 20 parking garages are part of the Narodny Garazh (people's garage) program, set up by the Moscow city government with the aim of solving one of the most urgent traffic problems facing the 10.5 million population city. According to officials, the city only has enough designated parking spaces for less than a third of the cars on Moscow's roads. The remaining 71 percent, that's around two million cars, have no official parking space. They park on sidewalks, in parks, on verges and in driveways. Increasingly they also double-park on main roads, causing long traffic jams.

The aims of the people's garage program are ambitious: By 2025, around 3.5 million additional parking spaces are to be created, enough to meet projected traffic growth. Around 900,000 will be in the form of new parking garages. The 20 garages from the current contract for ThyssenKrupp Steel Europe are of different sizes and offer on average 500 to 1,000 parking spaces.

Hoesch Additive Floor is a lightweight decking system comprising steel profiles topped with in-situ concrete. The system has been used successfully for around 18 years and is installed in more than 300 parking garages with a total area of over three million square meters. It is manufactured by the Color/Construction unit of ThyssenKrupp Steel Europe.

With a dead weight of only around 300 kilograms per square meter, Hoesch Additive Floor is some 40 percent lighter than solid concrete decking while offering the same load-bearing capacity. The low weight and the special profiling of the decking elements allow unsupported spans of more than five meters. As this permits the use of fewer, slimmer beams, significant savings can be made on the materials used for structural steelwork and foundations. In addition, Hoesch Additive Floor is quick and easy to install. The floor does not need propping during construction. Garage users also benefit from the large spans of the Additive floor: Fewer beams means greater visibility and greater safety in the garage, and there are no columns in the parking space entry areas to hinder access.

Hoesch Additive Floor is made from steel sheet with the new PLADUR®-ZM coating. This consists of a zinc-magnesium base coat that is much more corrosion-resistant than conventional zinc, plus a specially adapted paint top coat. The duplex coating ensures maximum corrosion protection in all environments. The color of the paint coat can be chosen to suit individual requirements

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