Recent trends and future prospects for structural steel technology used in buildings

摘要

Over the past 40 years, the number of Japan's steel buildings have increased to levels unparalleled in the rest of the world. As shown in Fig. 1, steel buildings became one of the main types of constructions, together with wood buildings, in the late 1980s. Steel use exceeded 5 million tons in 1970, and is estimated to have reached 12 million tons in 1990. Steel building construction has averaged about 10 million tons of steel per year in the past decade and is ex- pected to remain at this level in the future. This level of usage ac- counted for 15/100 of the 1996 domestic carbon steel demand of about 68 million tons.