Painting Structural Steel

Each material of construction requires its own provision for maintaining appearance and protection. For structural steel, this provision usually takes the form of painting. It has been estimated that about 2 million dollars per year are spent in protecting all kinds of structural steel surfaces, including railroad bridges, highway bridges, buildings, tanks, towers, power plants, water works, refineries, vessels, hydraulic and marine structures, public edifices, underground facilities, and industrial structures of almost infinite variety. Paint not only provides corrosion protection for these structures, but also makes valuable contributions to their safety and appearance. In fact, the painting of structural steel could be described as the principal means of protecting steel against its principal limitation — corrosion. The following discussion is intended to provide architects and engineers with a better understanding of some of the concepts and features of current practice in the painting of structural steel.