Corrugated iron is cost-effective and long-lasting.
The term corrugated iron refers to a family of metallic construction materials unified by their rippled appearance. Henry Palmer, who supervised warehouse construction for the London Dock Company, received a patent for indented or corrugated iron sheets in 1829. Initially made of wrought iron, the material proved lightweight yet strong, fire and corrosion resistant and easy to use and reuse. Iron's reactivity caused it to rust quickly, so today corrugated iron is galvanized, galvalumed or stainless steel.
Material
Corrugated metal panels or sheets are used in siding, roofing, decking and flooring applications. Choose the product based on the composition and manufacturing process of the base steel and its coating. The coating process, called galvanizing, is a hot-dip process of applying zinc or zinc-aluminum alloys. Specify the panel lengths you need and the gauge or thickness, remembering that the smaller the gauge, the thicker the metal regardless of its composition. Other important specifications, with standards set by ASTM International, formed in 1898 as the American Section of the International Association for Testing and Materials, include the material's mechanical properties, such as its load-bearing capacity and ductibility, which indicates the material's ability to bend without rupturing. Other standards for structural performance rating include tests using uniform static air pressure difference performed on both sheets and the anchors used to attach them together and to framing elements.
Profile
The ripple pattern or corrugation profile gives the steel sheet its strength to support other building parts or its own weight without buckling. Corrugation profiles are measured by depth and pitch. Depth means the height from the top of the crest to the bottom of the trough of the profile. Pitch measures the distance between two crests. ASTM standards call for sheets made with each profile to be interchangeable in terms of dimensions, curvature, and the number and size of holes punched for bolts per foot of seam. Newer corrugation patterns feature tangents and flat crests with varying widths of flat area between crests, rather than the continuous smooth and regular curves of the traditional corrugation profile created by rollers.
Color and Finish
Address aesthetic considerations by specifying corrugated panels to which color has been added through the application of a special plastic paint made with a resin of the fluoropolymer-family that resists peeling and fading. This coating comes in more than 30 colors, in high or low gloss finish and in a smooth texture or stucco-embossed pattern. Colored panels are also popular for roofs on residential buildings because their color can aid or hinder heat gain. Order panels without color in a milled, brushed or mirror finish. The composition of the alloy used in galvanized coatings matters because the elements, and the percentage of each, that form the alloy affect panel weight and certain other properties like magnetization.
Tags: between crests, corrugated iron, corrugation profile, made with
