Steel Plate: Imagine What You Can Do

[music] >> It's virtually everywhere. Above the ground, on the ground, below the ground, even on the ocean floor. It is a vital [music] part of our daily lives, a vital part of our commercial and industrial lives, a vital part of our economy. It performs a multitude [music] of necessary functions. Performs them so well, in fact, that we couldn't live our present way of life without it. >> [music] >> Steel plate, it's one of our most remarkable material achievements. It is one of the strongest, most durable, most versatile metals ever developed. A man-made material that assumes as many shapes and sizes as there are applications for its exceptional properties. A material with inexhaustible possibilities. The basic material of engineers and designers throughout the world. [music] The basic material for large and small diameter water pipe, >> [music] >> penstocks, tanks for liquid storage, offshore drilling [music] structures and production decks, blast furnaces, missile [music] launchers, supersonic wind tunnels, pressure vessels, power generating equipment [music] including nuclear reactor vessels. The basic material whenever you have a need for strength, durability, versatility, construction economy, and efficiency. Wherever you have a need for a material [music] to withstand tension, stress, pressure, extreme weather conditions, and the most prolonged use. Steel plate is your most dependable ally, >> [music] >> whether you work in industry, commerce, transportation, agriculture, natural resource supply, national defense, or other vital areas of modern national and international life. Steel plate, it's one of the easiest materials you can work with, handle, weld, fabricate, assemble, and maintain. A satisfying material, particularly [music] when it comes to satisfying your stringent design, engineering, and construction requirements. A material that stimulates your imagination. Steel plate, imagine what [music] you can do with it. >> [music] >> Imagine being able to design and construct vessels that can withstand 35,000 lb per square inch of pressure. Pressure [music] vessels of solid steel plate 12 in thick. Hemispherical heads more than 20 in thick fabricated of layers of thin plate. With steel plate below yield strength, you can go from tension to compression and back to tension again as many times as you want [music] with no loss of properties. You can design 80-ton creeper derricks capable of lifting 50-ton sections. [music] Stationary derricks that can raise vessels weighing up to 1,250 [music] tons, 200 ft in length. You can use steel plate's extraordinary tensile [music] strength to contain pressures produced by the complex processing of petroleum offshore and onshore, as in these flat-bottom steel plate oil tanks whose roofs float, supported by the buoyancy [music] of the oil in the tank. Or this bottomless tank, which was floated out to [music] sea 58 mi from land, eliminating expensive pipelines [music] by storing oil offshore. Taking advantage of steel plate's ability to adapt to any surroundings, a tank 205 ft high, 270 ft in diameter, weighing 15,000 tons with a 500,000 [music] barrel capacity, using the oil-water displacement method [music] for storing oil without contaminating the open sea. Steel plate [music] is the major material for submersible rigs in shallow water, mobile drill ships [music] and drill barges, movable jackups for deep explorations, and semi-submersible [music] stationary platforms that must withstand 100 mph [music] winds, 100-ft waves, and sub-zero weather. Platforms that are built on land, barged to the drill site, erected, and [music] anchored by means of light-guided tubular piles driven into the sea bottom to help fill our energy-hungry needs. Unlike other materials that are susceptible to environmental changes, steel plate is equally at home in the sea or on the land, in the Arctic or the Equator. It can be erected anytime [music] of year in the dead of winter in Alaska or the burning heat of summer in the desert. Steel plate, the product of a painstaking man-made process, made in the modern basic oxygen or electric furnace, a rigidly formulated, carefully regulated chemical process using iron ore and other preselected elements, carbon for hardness and tensile strength, [music] manganese for toughness and ductility, phosphorus for yield strength, and other elements including silicon, aluminum, nickel, tungsten, molybdenum. Rolled, quenched, tempered, and normalized to bring it to the exact hardness, strength, toughness, and ductility desired. Formed, pressed, >> [music] >> stamped, sheared, and finished to the exact shape and size desired, and then tested to confirm that it conforms to the requested specifications. You can choose [music] from a wide variety of steel plate, carbon steel plate, alloy steel plate, clad steel plate, a composite of two different steels in a host of different chemical formulations and property characteristics, custom-made if need be, quality controlled according to rigidly adhered to ASTM and ASME specifications in well-defined [music] tolerances for thickness, weight, width, length, and flatness. Steel [music] plate is a completely manufactured and fabricated material, a finished material ready to go to work for you when and where you need it, requiring no raw materials at the construction site, no trial batches, no curing, and no guesswork. [music] Steel plate, it's exactly what you specify you want it to be to do the job you need done, a material made for the job, not on the job, a material with no on-the-job surprises, a material that eliminates the need to improvise, to compromise, or to modify your original designs. >> [music] >> If you want it corrosion resistant, we can make it corrosion resistant, or ductile at inhumanly low temperatures, or resistant to hydrogen and other difficult-to-handle elements. Or we can open a whole new realm of applications by cladding it with pure metals. We can make it as hard and as tough and as strong as you need it to be. Strong enough to effectively resist tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, and other adverse environmental conditions. Steel plate, it's as convenient to fabricate as it is durable. No other material of construction [music] lends itself to so many precision forms of fabrication in the shop and in the field. Steel plate can be rolled, pressed, punched, formed, and bent. It can be sheared. It can be cut. It can be fitted, and it can be machined to precise tolerances. Steel plate [music] can be ground. It can be beveled. It can be bored. And steel plate can be welded. It can be arc welded using a shielded metal arc or a gas metal arc or a flux cored arc. It can be inert gas or electroslag welded in the vertical position. Or submerged arc welded or overlay welded for corrosion protection. >> [music] >> It can even be welded underwater. A welded continuity [music] of strength is produced between the plates so that the physical and chemical properties [music] of the weld are equal to or greater than those of the steel plates themselves. >> [music] >> To assure that the welds [music] are structurally sound, the steel plate fabricator uses a wide range of testing procedures, [music] including x-ray inspection, magnetic particle inspection, ultrasonic inspection, eddy current inspection, dye penetrant [music] inspection, inspection [music] procedures that are carefully monitored and checked through physical testing. Steel plate welding is one of the many techniques used by steel plate fabricators to assist you in speeding construction and helping reduce labor costs. Often steel plate components are completely fabricated in the shop and shipped to the job site thousands of miles away for final assembly and direction. For in addition to its other advantages, steel plate is a highly mobile material. Strong, durable, versatile, dependable, adaptable, and mobile to meet the many challenges of modern construction. To meet the growing needs for power through nuclear energy and pressure chambers constructed according to strict ASME boiler code standards. Impressed steel heads 8 in thick, 260 in in diameter, weighing 29 tons, pressure and leak tested to assure maximum operating safety. Steel [music] plate meeting the growing needs for power through hydroelectric energy from the wondrous Niagara. In penstocks to help convert the turbulent waters into 2 million kilowatts of harnessed electric power. Penstocks [music] containing 676 individual rings, 24 ft in diameter, 10 ft long, weighing 31 tons each, carefully aligned and keyed. Joined by more than 12 miles of welds. Welds requiring more than 47,000 x-rays for inspection. Hydrostatically tested under 262 [music] lb per square inch of pressure. >> [music] >> A tremendous engineering achievement. >> [music] >> And water brings us to another distinct advantage of steel plate, its total absence of porosity. A characteristic recognized by the American Water Works Association, according to whose strict standards a steel [music] plate water tank is the only water tank that is certified watertight, leak-free. A characteristic that accounts for the fact [music] that steel plate is the most widely accepted material for water tank construction. >> [music] >> Steel plate has proved just [music] as exceptional in other important areas. In space chambers to simulate pressures at altitudes [music] of 1 and 1/2 million feet or more for testing components. In alloy steel [music] liquid hydrogen storage tanks where temperatures descend to minus 423° [music] Fahrenheit. In vacuum chambers for testing lunar orbits. In basic oxygen [music] steel making vessels. And in the 630-ft high St. Louis Gateway Arch. Consisting of 6-ft by 18-ft stainless steel plates butt welded into triangular sections in the shop. Shipped to the site. Hoisted and lined up. And welded together to fraction of an inch tolerances. Resulting in a 3,000-ton inverted [music] catenary monument to America's pioneer and engineering spirit. Whatever the need, the possibilities inherent in steel plate are virtually limitless. Possibilities that become exciting realities. [music] Economic realities through the various techniques of [music] steel plate fabrication. In itself, an exciting and stimulating profession worth [music] considering. In the plant or in the field. In engineering, design, or research. As a shop [music] quality assurance specialist, metallurgist, welding [music] engineer, designer, project supervisor, field supervisor, or research and development technician. Steel plate fabrication, a more than $3 billion industry fabricating more than 3 million tons of [music] steel plate annually. An industry based on one of the strongest, most durable, most versatile materials ever developed. Steel plate, [music] imagine what you can do with it.