There’s more than meets the eye with our choice of steel. While nearly all others use cold rolled A36 plate steel at 3/16″ or even 1/4″ thickness, we chose a different strategy. Our steel is hot rolled 10 gauge 1011-CS Type B, which means it has been tempered to give it pliability and remove the inherent brittleness found with A36. It also keeps the panel weight light enough to be user friendly.
Our steel performs more like kevlar, increasing the impact time by limited deflection, which greatly enhances the unit’s ability to effectively dissipate the impact energy into the structure and properly transfer it to the concrete. It’s like the crumple zone on your car. Even the guys at Texas Tech couldn’t believe how well it performed during impact testing. And of course, since it is designed to deflect we offer a lifetime replacement warranty on any parts deflected due to debris impacts.
Although other shelters may be made with thicker A36 steel, the A36 doesn’t dissipate the energy nearly as effectively as ours, so the impact energy remains much more focused at the point of impact. It will remain rigid and either stand up to debris or rip open and fail catastrophically since it isn’t tempered like our steel. Stopping blunt 2×4 impacts is one thing, but a fence post or street sign post may be another matter. So all of that to say there’s more to steel performance than simply thickness.
