The Use of Cast Steel in Steel Structure

With the improvement of casting and material technology, cast steel is continuously used in practical engineering projects. Domestic and foreign scholars studied the performance of cast steel joints by experiment or the other methods and extended them to beam-column connections in steel frames. This paper mainly introduced the development of beam-column connection forms, the main problems in joint design, advantages and disadvantages of the joints with various forms, material properties and manufacturing process characteristics of cast steel, advantages of cast steel joints and fasteners, research status and achievements at home and abroad. The results show that compared with traditional connection forms, designers have full freedom to choose the shapes and the sizes, and joints made of cast steel have the best adaptability and changeability in different engineering practice, what’s more, they have no problems with welding residual stress and stress concentration. Compared with other materials, cast steel has more advantages such as flexible application, convenience of connections, small volume, low cost. In a word, cast steel has great research value and application potential in connections of steel structure.