Reynolds Metals

help me how to calculate the weight and surface area of structural steel?

basic formula for calculating weight and surface area of I-beam, channel, angle bar, etc.

Public Comments

1. To calculate the surface area, you need to add up the rectangular area of each of the faces of a given shape. That's not too hard, just multiply the length of a piece with the sum of the width of the sides. To calculate the weight, you first need the volume. All of the pieces you mention can be approximated by adding together a number of rectangular sub-components to get the cross sectional area. Multiply that area by the length of the beam to get the volume of the beam. From there you need to convert the volume into the mass of the beam. That depends on the exact material used to construct the beam, which should be available on the web. Once you have the mass you can calculate the weight with the formula W = m · g where W is the weight, m is the mass calculated previously and g is acceleration due to gravity. In metric units that's about 9.81 metres per second each second, or 32.2 feet per second each second.