HE 550 A - Section Properties

HE 550 A has a mass of 166 kg/m, tabulated to EN 10365. A 12 m length therefore weighs about 1992 kg, which is the figure to use for a steel take-off or when checking a lift.

HE 550 A has a depth of 540 mm, a width of 300 mm, a web thickness of 12.5 mm, a flange thickness of 24 mm, with a cross-sectional area of 212 cm². These are the nominal dimensions from EN 10365; rolling tolerances apply to the delivered section.

The plastic section modulus about the major axis, Wpl,y, is 4,620 cm³, and the elastic modulus Wel,y is 4,150 cm³. Wpl,y is what sets the moment capacity of a Class 1 or 2 section: M_pl,Rd = Wpl,y x f_y / gamma_M0, so at S355 with gamma_M0 = 1.0 this section reaches about 1640 kNm before any stability check.

The second moment of area about the major axis, Iy, is 112,000 cm⁴, and about the minor axis Iz is 10,800 cm⁴. Iy is the value deflection depends on - for a simply supported beam under a uniform load, the midspan deflection is 5wL⁴/384EIy - so on spans where a deflection limit governs rather than strength, this is the number that decides the section.

Its local-buckling ratios are cf/tf = 4.86 for the flange and cw/tw = 35 for the web. EN 1993-1-1 Table 5.2 compares these against limits scaled by epsilon = sqrt(235/f_y), so the class depends on the steel grade as well as the geometry - the same section can be Class 1 in S275 and Class 3 in S355. Use the Capacity tab on this page for the classification at a specific grade.

iy is 23 cm about the major axis and iz is 7.15 cm about the minor axis. Column buckling is governed by the SMALLER value: the slenderness is lambda = L_cr / i, so with iz = 7.15 cm a 0.7 m effective length already gives lambda = 100. Minor-axis buckling almost always controls unless the weak axis is restrained.

The St Venant torsion constant It is 360 cm⁴, and the warping constant Iw is 7.19 dm⁶. Open sections carry torsion mainly by warping rather than uniform torsion, which is why Iw appears in the lateral-torsional buckling resistance - both values feed M_b,Rd.