As cities around the world grow ever more crowded and city planners try to rein in urban sprawl, people are increasingly turning to apartment buildings for their homes. But while apartment complexes have many conveniences and advantages, one drawback is often noise, as everyone needs to deal with the footsteps and other sounds of life going on in the apartment above. Or, rather, that was a drawback.

POSCO has now introduced PosCoZy, a unique flooring system to combines manganese Z-clips with continuous galvanized steel plates to create floors that greatly reduce impact noise, save space and lower costs.

Leading Noise Reduction

Manganese Z-clips have four times higher resistance to vibrations than general steel. Combined with POSCO’s continuous galvanized steel plates, the PosCoZy flooring is able to significantly reduce the impact noise between floors in apartment buildings.

PosCoZy is the first floor system to receive a First Class silence rating from Korea’s industrial rating agency. This vibration-dampening reduces the sound of typical walking from 50 decibels to just 40dB, while impact sounds are lowered from 58dB to 38dB. In other words, PosCoZy is able to turn the noise levels produced by running children into something more akin to the quiet you’d expect in a library.

This manganese steel floor plating is also good for remodeling old structures, even those more than 15 years old with thin flooring, producing 4^th Class Noise Absorption Performance.

Space Savings for Improved Efficiency

In apartments, space is usually at a premium – not sure floor space, but vertical space as well. Thicker floors mean less spacing for living in. However, PosCoZy is thinner than typical flooring, reducing floor thickness by 15 millimeters.

In addition, the manganese Z-clips that support the galvanized steel plating create open spaces under the floor, creating room for piping, LAN cables or other wiring to run. Furthermore, the strength of the steel plates as flooring increases the floor’s capability to hold heavy loads, lasting longer without deformation.

More Economical, to Save Money

A third important advantage of PosCoZy is that it’s economical. The air layer formed in PosCoZy, along with heat insulation, prevents thermal loss and improves heating speed, improving the thermal capabilities. All together, that translates into savings in heating costs, which saves people money.

Silent, efficient and economical – those are the remarkable advantages that POSCO’s exciting new innovation in steel flooring offers builders and consumers. For more information about all the advantages of PosCoZy and high manganese steel flooring, check out the full video below:

POSCO’s High Manganese Steel Floor Plate Wins the Jang Young Sil Award for Its Vibration-Resistant Qualities

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The escape ladder refers to a structure installed in the balcony or on the floor slab of apartments that allow a person to evacuate a building in the event of a fire or emergency situation. It works by opening up a buried hatch, unfolding a containment ladder, and climbing down the ladder to the ground below.

The current Building Act requires apartment buildings to install any one of the following: a shelter space, lightweight party wall between housing units, evacuation exit on a party wall, or a top-down evacuation exit (escape ladder).

Escape ladder made of the high-strength, high-corrosion resistant stainless steel PossSD.

Having already been implemented in buildings in Busan and Gyeongnam Province, some local governments in Chungnam Province are now also seeking to install the escape ladders. This has led to a new demand for stainless steel, which amounts to around 3,000 tons as of last year, and such demand is expected to make an annual growth of more than 20%.

Responding to the demand in the market, POSCO has gone through trial productions for its unique stainless steel material, PossSD, which the company had developed to replace the 304 steel. In collaboration with domestic producers of the escape ladder since early this year, POSCO also plans to start mass-producing and supplying the product in September after undergoing a fire safety certification test.

Having the similar level of corrosion-resistance and ductility as 304 steel, PossSD won the Innovation of the Year Award last October from the World Steel Association. The use of PossSD has improved the stability and durability of the newly developed escape ladder. The company plans to further promote the material, targeting local governments, domestic construction companies and manufacturers of escape ladder to expand its sales.

How POSCO is Making the World Earthquake-Resistant

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Around 150 related parties attended the award ceremony held in the Maekyung Media Center, including First Vice Minister Namki Hong of the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning. POSCO Steel Solution Marketing Department’s Managing Director Deokrak Lee and principal researcher Youngdong Yoo had the honor of receiving the awards as representatives of the company and associated developers.

POSCO won the Jang Young Sil Award for its noise-proof floor plate. Steel Solution Marketing Department’s Managing Director Deokrak Lee (on the right) and principal researcher Youngdong Yoo (second from right) are seen receiving the awards.

Unlike conventional flooring that uses non-steel materials such as Styrofoam insulators and rubber buffer materials, POSCO’s floor plate is developed by combining high manganese (Mn) steel Z clips – a material that is 4 times vibration-resistant than general steel – with POSCO’s hot-dip galvanized steel plate, making it capable of reducing noise between floors. The Z-shaped high manganese steel clips absorb the vibration energy applied to the floor, and thus preventing noise. Test results showed that POSCO’s high manganese steel floor plate revealed a noise level that is lower than other top grade floor plates (43㏈or lower for lightweight impact sound, and 40㏈ or lower for heavyweight impact sound).

The floor plate made of high manganese (Mn) steel was jointly developed by POSCO and POSCO E&C beginning in June 2014. After acquiring state-registered performance certification last November, POSCO is currently promoting its steel product for apartment buildings, and will increase its market share in premium housings with on-site pilot projects.

“We are currently developing technologies to apply the high manganese steel plate not only to floor plates, but also to ceilings and walls,” said Youngdong Yoo. “We plan to expand the application scope of this product to various industrial fields beyond the domestic and overseas construction markets, such as ships and home appliances as well.”

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The mere mention of the city conjures up images such as towering skyscrapers, luxury hotels and mysterious desert dunes.

But compared to its neighboring emirates, this “Miracle in the Desert” has very few gas reserves. As such, Dubai began preparing for the post-oil era long before its onset. The large increases in oil prices after the Gulf War of 1990 encouraged the city to focus its efforts primarily on free trade and has since transformed into a global hub for trade and logistics.

Now, countries throughout the Middle East are looking to Dubai, which is considered the world’s most strikingly modern and prosperous city, as a model of success.

Seeing the potential of the region, POSCO opened its first office in the Middle East in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1975. Later, in 1998, the steel company opened the Dubai presence of its Singapore office, which was promoted as the Dubai office in 2006.

Currently, there are four employees working at this location who oversee POSCO activities in 19 countries: 14 in the Middle East and 5 in North Africa.

In response to changing marketing conditions, the Dubai office is working to increase the sales of products by focusing on reinforcing its solution-based marketing capabilities. It is also working hard to promote POSCO’s innovative solutions to its clients ordering construction projects, and is seeking to create new business opportunities with other Middle Eastern offices of POSCO affiliates.

To get an idea of where the future of POSCO is headed in terms of construction, it only makes sense to take a look at some of Dubai’s most impressive architectural projects of the past which used steel as a construction material. Here are three of them:

Burj Khalifa

Also known as the “Jewel of Dubai”, this 164-story building is the tallest free-standing structure in the world. The building took about five and a half years to build, and used over 31,400 metric tons of steel rebar. Laid end to end, this would stretch over a quarter of the way around the world!

The Burj Khalifa has since become a symbol of the wealth and progress embodied by the Persian Gulf city and currently houses a mix of residential spaces, corporate suites and the Armani Hotel Dubai, the world’s first hotel designed and developed by Giorgio Armani himself.

Princess Tower

(Image courtesy of Wikipedia)

Also a record-breaker, the Princess Tower is the world’s tallest residential tower at 414 meters and 107 floors. The building boasts 763 luxury apartments, including a number of penthouse apartments overlooking the Palm Jumeirah, a dramatic artificial archipelago that resembles a palm tree.

Yet the most impressive aspect of the Princess Tower is its grandiose exterior, which includes a decorative dome that sits atop the building like a giant crown. The dome, which was finished in February 2012, has a mast on the top of it, which weighs 110 tons and is made of aluminum and steel.

O-14

(Image courtesy of Archdaily)

O-14’s façade is an inventive merger of structure and solar shading that is based on a perforated exoskeleton that challenges the concept of an office building altogether. The 1,300 openings in the tower’s shell create a sensational show of natural light that allows for a unique and ever-changing interior space, and permits cool air to filter through the building, thus saving energy.

The outer concrete and steel skin of O-14 also play a fundamental role in supporting the inner tower with an array of linking beams. Eliminating the need of interior columns creates more floor space, and as such, more areas for rent.

Considering the fact that Dubai is seemingly always under construction, and in constant pursuit of breaking even more world records, it’s certain that the demand for steel and POSCO’s services will continue to increase.