Motivation

Use of structural steel in the construction and infrastructure sectors in India has remained poor even after 75 years of independence from colonial powers. While India’s steel sector has made significant progress and has become the second largest producer of steel, the use of structural steel remains limited mostly to industrial structures and railway infrastructure. This is reflected in the per capita consumption of 102.6 kg in 2024 (World Steel Association), which is far below other countries, such as South Korea (923.5 kg) and Germany (312.7 kg). The National Steel Policy (2017) categorically highlighted this issue and set targets for the future.

One reason behind this domestic supply-to-demand disparity is the severe lack of capacity in engineering practice. Revision of the design standard, setting up of a promotional organization, conducting training programmes, etc. have not been able to create design engineers, architects, draftspersons, fabricators and contractors, who can deliver steel structures at a rate competitive to that of concrete structures. Moreover, only a handful of colleges can produce engineers who are equipped to handle the architecture-engineering-construction of steel structures confidently. A software tool dedicated to structural steel design and detailing is one simple and effective solution for this.

Such a software is expected to:

  • Provide hands-on design experience for college students, and thus creating tomorrow’s designers familiar and confident with steel design

  • Provide practical design experience for (new) practising engineers

  • Work as a teaching tool helping college teachers

  • Integrate easily with modern ICT-based teaching techniques

Design consultancy firms use similar in-house tools, which greatly benefit the particular firm’s work. However, these are not in the public domain. Developing a FOSS for structural steel design will help not only in achieving the goals stated above, but also, like any other open-source software, in

 a. fast dissemination,

 b. benefiting from many developers’ inputs,

 c. room for customisation, and

 d. easy modification in the future.