Queensferry Learning
Structural Steel Design
Structural behaviour, member design, connections and construction.
How a steel structure behaves, how it should be modelled, how sections and members are verified, how connections transfer force, and how design decisions reach the fabricator and the erector. The course separates what follows from mechanics from what a code has calibrated, because in steel design that boundary is unusually sharp and unusually easy to lose — the Euler load is derivable, and the buckling curve that replaces it is not.
Who it is for
- Civil and structural engineering students meeting steel design for the first time
- Graduates starting steel design work
- Engineers revising Eurocode 3 or returning to steel after time away
- Engineers preparing for technical interviews
- Engineers checking or reviewing someone else's steel design
- Engineers who use analysis software and want to understand the checks it performs
- Fabrication and construction engineers who want stronger design knowledge
What you need first
- Equilibrium, reactions, shear force and bending moment
- Section properties, bending stress and shear stress
- Euler buckling and the idea of a critical load
- Torsion, at least for circular sections
- The Queensferry Structural Analysis Fundamentals course, or equivalent
How it works
Behaviour first, then the equation that models it. Every relationship is labelled with what kind of statement it is — derived from mechanics, a chosen material model, an expression calibrated against tests, or a number the National Annex simply chooses. Confusing those four is how engineers come to trust results they cannot check, so the course keeps them separate throughout.
The syllabus runs to 20 modules in five stages. 20 are written so far, giving 40 lessons with 41 worked examples and 261 practice questions. The remaining 0 are listed below so you can see the whole field.
The syllabus
Five stages, from how the material behaves through to a complete design and the checking of it. Each stage states what it assumes, so an experienced learner can enter partway in.
Steel, design basis and analysis
4 of 4 written- 01Open →
Structural steel as a material
What steel actually does when you load it, and why almost every surprising rule in steel design traces back to one fact: the grade changes the strength and leaves the stiffness alone.
- 02Open →
Design basis, actions and combinations
The same combination rules as any other material — and a set of cases that only bite steel, because steel structures are light.
- 03Open →
Structural forms, load paths and modelling
The building and the model are different objects. Knowing exactly which parts of the building the model does not contain is most of the skill.
- 04Open →
Analysis methods, imperfections and second-order effects
Seven analysis methods, four stability effects, and one piece of bookkeeping that decides whether the design is safe, wasteful, or wrong in a way nothing reveals.
Cross-sections and members
7 of 7 written- 05Open →
Steel sections and cross-section classification
Why a thin plate gives way before the steel it is made of ever reaches yield — and why a section does not have a class until you say what it is carrying.
- 06Open →
Cross-section resistance
What a slice of steel can carry — in tension, compression, bending, shear and torsion, and in the combinations that actually occur.
- 07Open →
Compression members and flexural buckling
The route from an ideal column to a design resistance — five steps, three of them derivable and two of them not, and the join is where most misunderstanding lives.
- 08Open →
Beams and lateral-torsional buckling
A beam loaded downwards can fail sideways. Understanding why turns a mysterious code check into something you can reason about — and shows that where you put the load matters as much as how big it is.
- 09Open →
Beam-columns and frame stability
Almost every real column carries moment as well as axial force, and the two do not simply add. The axial force bends the member further, and the same effect scales up to whole frames — where it becomes a question about stiffness, not strength.
- 10Open →
Plate girders, built-up members and local effects
When you build a member out of separate plates you can put the steel exactly where it earns its keep — and you introduce failures that a rolled section never has. Both halves of that bargain are worth understanding.
- 11Open →
Steel–concrete composite beams
Make the slab work with the beam instead of sitting on it and the moment resistance nearly doubles for the price of some studs. The catches are all in the sequence: what carries what, and when.
Connections and joints
3 of 3 written- 12Open →
Bolts, pins and welds
A fastener does not have a resistance. It has several, belonging to different failure modes in different materials — and which one governs decides what would actually help.
- 13Open →
Connection and joint design
A joint is a chain of components in series. That one idea settles both questions it raises — the weakest component sets the resistance, and every component sets the stiffness — and they are almost never the same component.
- 14Open →
Column bases and anchorages
Where steel design stops and concrete and anchor design begin. A base plate cannot spread pressure further than it can span, the tension side is a T-stub you have already met, and the shear is not carried by the bolts.
Structural systems
3 of 3 written- 15Open →
Single-storey buildings and portal frames
The first whole building. A portal frame is designed by a work equation, made economic by a haunch, and kept standing by stays that are on the drawing for one reason most people never learn.
- 16Open →
Multi-storey steel buildings
Everything repeats. A decision about a floor zone is made once and paid for on every storey, which is why the most consequential choices in a multi-storey building are made before any member is sized.
- 17Open →
Crane-supporting structures
A member with no fixed critical section, checked in positions rather than at a point — and then sized by a limit state that has not appeared anywhere else in this course.
Construction and integrated design
3 of 3 written- 18Open →
Fabrication, erection and durability
The point at which a design stops being a calculation and becomes an instruction to somebody else — and the two limit states that are reached on site rather than in service.
- 19Open →
A complete steel building
No new theory. One structure carried from brief to erection, and the thing eighteen separate modules could not show: how the decisions interact.
- 20Open →
Checking, review and knowing what you do not know
The question the other nineteen modules assumed an answer to: how do you find out whether a design is right — and how does a design say what it cannot vouch for?
Modules marked not written yet are part of the syllabus and are listed so the scope is honest. The calculation library and the design-standard profile system that they need are already built and tested.