Current site: Peikko Canada (English). Do you want to change country or language?
DELTABEAM® Slim Floor Structure allows you to build open spaces – even with architecturally demanding shapes. DELTABEAM® is the best alternative to post-tension flat slab.
DELTABEAM® is a superior composite beam enabling slim-floors for multi-story buildings of any type, whether low-rise or high-rise. Its composite action between steel and concrete allows for creative structures with large open spaces.
Underwriter laboratories (UL) fire tests have proven DELTABEAM® has excellent fire resistance without any additional protection. Its shallow design decreases a building’s floor-to-floor height while eliminating conflicts with HVAC systems.
See Peikko DELTABEAM® Frame video
Since 1989 DELTABEAM® has been used in thousands of buildings globally and Peikko’s technical support is available to assist in helping you find the most suitable solution for your project.
DELTABEAM® Slim Floor allows for lower floor-to-floor heights and maximizes the number of floors in a building. In some cases, additional floors can even be gained while maintaining the same building height.
The composite action between steel and concrete allows DELTABEAM® to easily span over 30 feet between columns. Since DELTABEAM® is often utilized to support prestessed hollowcore slabs, the spans perpendicular to the beam can even go beyond 40 feet. The long spans in both directions mean less columns are needed on the floor plate. A floor layout with less columns allows for floor plans to easily be altered to meet the varying needs of tenants throughout the lifecycle of the building.
Being a prefabricated structure, construction time is reduced and delays due to weather are minimized. The superior spans provided by DELTABEAM® reduce the number of pieces to assemble in a given floor plate.
Carefully modelled in 3D prior to fabrication, each DELTABEAM® connects perfectly to the structure through a variety of pre-engineered standard connections. Together with BIM (Building Information Modeling), this thorough process helps identify conflicts early on in the design stage to prevent costly on-site repairs.
In addition to quick assembly, DELTABEAM® requires little to no shoring. A floor without shoring posts allows immediate access to other construction trades, the overall construction schedule is therefore shortened.
As shown in this video, a floor plate of over 12,000 ft2 is erected in as little as 4 days with a crew of only 5 workers. This resulted in erecting 5 floors in just 20 days.
Integrated fire resistance offers additional time and cost savings. The reinforcement and concrete inside the beam ensures lifelong fire resistance. Proven by a full-scale fire test at UL (Underwriters Laboratories), DELTABEAM® is fire-rated up to 4 hours without any additional fireproofing material required.
When combined with non-combustible columns such as Peikko’s composite columns or precast columns, the fireproofing trade can be completely eliminated from a project.
DELTABEAM® can reduce the thickness of a floor assembly by over 2 feet compared to a conventional steel floor. This reduction in height has an impact on all vertical components of a building. In some cases, the savings on cladding alone cover the cost of DELTABEAM®. The cost of all other vertical components of the building such as elevators, walls, columns, conduits, etc. will also be reduced due to a lower floor-to-floor height.
The following table compares DELTABEAM® to a conventional steel beam in identical scenarios. The column on the right shows by how much the floor thickness can be reduced when using DELTABEAM®
The installation of DELTABEAM® Frame is fast and allows for quick access to sub-trades.
Here are three ways you can increase your return on investment through faster construction:
DELTABEAM® Frame helps reduce foundation costs in two simple ways: a lighter structure and a reduction in number of footings or pile groups needed.
When combined with hollowcore slabs or long span metal deck, a DELTABEAM® structure weighs up to 25% less than a conventional cast-in-place structure. A lighter structure typically results in less expensive foundations.
A structure with DELTABEAM® often requires less columns than a cast-in-place structure due to its ability to provide longer spans. Fewer columns lead to less footings or pile groups in the foundations, resulting in less excavation and forming costs.
Having a thin floor assembly without any protruding beams under the slabs provides many benefits in terms of HVAC systems required. Since a thin floor structure reduces the area of exterior cladding, it also reduces heat loss in winter and heat gains in summer. This reduction has a direct impact on the size of the HVAC units needed which leads to more savings on the acquisition costs of the HVAC units as well as the cost of running the units throughout the entire life cycle of the building.
When a ventilation duct conflicts with a protruding beam (wide flange or precast), the additional friction created by the 4 elbows required to avoid the beam are equivalent to over 100 feet of additional ductwork (Reference: ACCA’s Manual D). If this condition occurs multiple times in a project, a bigger fan might be required to compensate for the additional friction in the ventilation system. This shows once more how a slim floor can help optimize HVAC systems.
Buildings represent approximatively 40% (Reference) of the world’s energy consumption therefore any improvement on building efficiency can have a huge impact globally.
One of the most significant impacts of DELTABEAM® is how it contributes to making buildings more sustainable through its ability to make floors slimmer. Slim floor buildings require less cladding for the same usable interior volume which in turn reduces heating and cooling energy consumption.
Slim floors also mean that there is less waste of material in building plenums. All the space saved between floors reduces the amount of vertical components needed such as cladding, columns, walls, elevator and stair shafts, pipes, ducts, etc.
Conventional structures often generate a significant amount of construction waste due to their need for formwork which only ends up getting disposed of after use. Peikko Structures greatly reduce waste by designing optimized prefabricated components. The beams and columns use only the exact amount of material required to support floors while hollowcore slabs eliminate the need for formwork on site by being casted on reusable steel beds. Additionally, the voids in the hollowcore slabs reduce the amount of concrete needed for the floors. This reduction in concrete also reduces the weight of the slabs thus lightening the entire structure (beams, columns and bracings) supporting the floors which can in turn lead to a reduction in the size of foundations.
Being a custom built section, DELTABEAM® can be designed and fabricated to accommodate almost any floor layout. Deltabeam is an excellent choice for your building perimeter; the closed box design of DELTABEAM® provides the torsion capacity required for edge conditions. Floor-to-ceiling windows are easily achieved through the shallow cross-section of DELTABEAM® which provides maximum natural light and higher occupant comfort.
Maybe you are looking for that extra wow factor needed to design landmark architecture and a more lucrative project with cantilevers and curves?
With custom shaped and in-built formwork, you will have more architectural freedom while benefiting from the efficiency of the DELTABEAM® Slim-Floor Structure.
DELTABEAM® can be used with hollowcore slabs, long-span metal deck, filigree, solid wooden slabs and cast-in-place slabs.
Peikko’s composite columns offer integrated fire resistance, small cross-sections and seamless coordination with DELTABEAM®, nevertheless any type of column can support DELTABEAM®. The choice of material used for the columns is completely up to the owner, architect or engineer. DELTABEAM® has been used with precast concrete columns, steel wide flange columns, steel tube columns (HSS), wooden columns as well as cast-in-place columns.
When large openings are required in a structure with load bearing walls, DELTABEAM® can be used as a giant lintel between two walls allowing for additional flexibility in the floor layout.
Since 1989 DELTABEAM® has successfully been used in over 15,000 projects and in over 35 countries. DELTABEAM® has also undergone a series of full scale tests over the years in order to better understand its behavior in minute detail.
One of the reasons for DELTABEAM®’s success is due to its simplicity of installation on the jobsite. Simple connections along with great engineering support throughout the projects have helped thousands of industry professionals complete their projects easily and successfully.
Any qualified erector can erect a DELTABEAM® Frame quickly with ease since all of the elements are prefabricated and the number of pieces required is reduced thanks to having long spans.
As DELTABEAM® is designed to be used as a structural element with all slab and column types, we can offer you a number of connection components and methods to meet your requirements.
1. A hidden PCs® Corbel is cast into the concrete column. DELTABEAM® is placed on top of the PCs® Corbel’s bracket, enabling straight mold walls and superior adjustability on site as well as high resistances.
2. Anchor Bolts are used to connect DELTABEAM® on top of concrete columns.
3. WELDA® Anchor Plates are installed on top of columns or walls and DELTABEAM® is welded onto its surface.
1. Corbel connection
2. Bolted connection on top of the column
3. Bolted connection on the side of the column
4. Welded connection
1. DELTABEAM® supported by a Mass Timber Column
2. Mass Timber Column Connected to a DELTABEAM®
3. Wood panel to cover the underside of the DELTABEAM®
