"Hot Rolled Products of Structural Steels"
This is the harmonized European standard for structural steel, produced by Technical Committee 103 of the European Committee for Iron and Steel Standardization (ECISS), which is part of the European Committee for Standardization (CEN) (www.cen.eu).
The standard has 6 parts. Part 1 sets out general delivery conditions; Part 2 applies to non-alloy structural steels (e.g., S355J); Part 3 applies to normalized weldable fine grain steels (e.g., S355N); Part 4 applies to thermomechanically rolled weldable fine grain steels (e.g., S355M); Part 5 applies to structural steels with improved atmospheric corrosion resistance; and Part 6 sets out the delivery conditions for high yield strength structural steel in the quenched and tempered condition (e.g., S690Q and S690QL). Our HS 100 grade includes steels from Part 6 of this standard.
The letter "S" at the beginning of the designation stands for "structural steel". The number (e.g., 690) indicates the minimum yield strength in MPa at a plate thickness of 16mm. The letter at the end of the number (e.g., J, N, M, Q and QL) indicates the minimum required longitudinal Charpy V-notch values at a plate thickness of 16mm. Q means 40J at -20C. QL means 50J at -40C. QL1 means 60J at -60C.