Moment Frames and helical piling systems are designed to provide safety and strength
You may have recently purchased or are considering installation of a MAGNUM® Moment Frame for support of your home in a hurricane prone region. This document provides some basic information to help increase your awareness about the engineering behind the MAGNUM® Moment Frame.
Description and History
Steel moment frames have been in use for more than one hundred years, practically since structural steel started being used in building construction. The invention of the steel moment frame brought about the advent of the modern skyscraper. This technology allowed buildings to be constructed over 8 stories tall. By inventing a pre-engineered, interchangeable system that is easy to erect, MAGNUM® Piering, Inc. has made this advanced technology affordable to the homeowner.
Strength and Corrosion
MAGNUM® Moment Frames and helical piling systems are designed to provide a factor of safety for strength that meets applicable codes after 75 years of corrosion. The American Institute of Steel Construction standard specifications requires factors of safety between 1.7 and 2.0 depending on stress conditions. What this means is that your MAGNUM® Moment Frame is predicted to have 1.7 to 2 times the allowable strength required to resist the next hurricane even after 75 years of corrosion. It is also important to note that MAGNUM® engineers evaluated corrosion data for galvanized steel published by the National Bureau of Standards and applied the worst 5% of the data to come up with corrosion rates.