Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-based steelmaker United States Steel Corporation (US Steel) has started offering new steel product options for architects, building designers and structural engineers in a joint ‘Weathered Metal Series' project with US coil coating company Precoat Metals.
According to a company press release, US Steel said that demand for weathered steels has grown in recent years as the company has kept striving to enhance such products.
In 2005, US Steel developed COR-TEN AZP Prepainted Steel Sheet as a superior product to COR-TEN steel and other weathering steels for architectural roofing and siding applications. Created by coil-coating, GALVALUME (an aluminum-zinc alloy consisting of 55 percent aluminum)coated steel sheet substrate COR-TEN AZP is designed to look like COR-TEN steel, providing builders with the color and texture of weathering steel, while maintaining the structural integrity of the thin-gauge steel and eliminating the waiting time previously required for nature to alter the product's appearance.
The weathered metal offering has also been expanded to include weathered copper and weathered galvanized steel. All three products (COR-TEN AZP, COPPER-TEN and GALV-TEN) are available in two distinct stages of aging - moderately weathered ‘raw' and more heavily weathered ‘robust'. As with the original COR-TEN AZP, all of these new offerings incorporate cool pigment technology.