LONG SPAN BEAMS

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CASE STUDIES
1)Riverside Museum, Glasgow, Scotland:
Zaha Hadid is known for designing buildings with
far-out forms. The recently completed Riverside
Museum in Glasgow, Scotland, lives up to this
reputation, featuring a zig-zagging profile in plan
and section. Although seeming to defy gravity
with its column-free spans, the building conceals
some savvy structural manoeuvres beneath its
sleek skin of zinc. Engineering giant Buro Happold
was the wizard behind the curtain.
A temple to transport and technology, the
Riverside Museum showcases Glasgow’s rich
history of shipbuilding beneath a dramatic,
jagged roofline. The building’s form is akin to
folding a piece of paper into pleats and then
bending it twice – 120 degrees in opposite
directions – along its length. Such manoeuvres are
easily accomplished with paper, but real-life
constraints, including supporting the weight of
building materials and resisting wind loads, call for
careful calculations.
Buro Happold articulated the roof structure to
function as a single unit that spans lengthwise like
a rigid beam rather than crossways between side
walls, explains Wolf Mangelsdorf, head of
structural engineering. “We are accustomed to
dissecting a structure into individual elements that
perform different functions – a column, beam,
secondary beam, or floor plate,” he points out,
“but in this case, they all function together and
you can’t take one piece away.”
These integral pieces include a series of latticed
trusses made of structural steel. Steel tubes form
ridges and valleys that ultimately span a length of
over 100 m (328'), including those two twists-and-
turns. While typical A-frames rely on horizontal
members to complete the "triangle" and provide
stiffness, the engineers had to eliminate them in
the Riverside Museum to preserve Hadid’s
streamlined vision for the pleats. The inclination of
the members themselves provides a stiffening
effect.
The metal roof’s design offers some built-in
tolerance, which allowed for push and pull
throughout the design process. “The angles of the
roof could be adjusted as we went along to
accommodate programmatic shifts beneath
without destroying the design’s overall concept,”
explains Mangelsdorf. Ultimately, these folds must
resist vertical loads, which could cause them to
flatten out if not properly detailed.
One load consideration is the weight of the roof
itself: the steel members weigh 2,500 metric tons
(over 5.5 million pounds) and they are topped
with 185 metric tons (over 400,000 pounds) of zinc
cladding. The architect's design called for an
open interior to provide flexibility for ever-
changing exhibitions, so internal columns were not
an option. The engineers did place columns along
the exterior walls to transfer the weight of the roof
to the ground. These columns are spaced 6 m
(19.7') on centre with a depth of 700 mm (just over
2') and were designed with stiff connections. As
well, the brackets on the columns support
platforms that cantilever from the wall like shelves
to create display space for the Riverside
Museum’s collection of cars.
Another major load consideration was the force
of the wind, which can gust in at over 100 mph
from the Atlantic. The engineers conducted wind
tunnel analyses on a physical model to
accurately study how the wind pressure
distribution would work and anticipate peak
suctions and stresses at overhangs. They placed
portal frames and cross bracing in the periphery
of the building that provide lateral stability,
located along the retail areas, cloak rooms, cafe
area, and workshops.
With weight transferred effectively down through
the side walls and with proper bracing in place,
the end walls of the Riverside Museum could
open, allowing natural light to permeate the
building and creating a symbolic link between the
River Clyde and the city of Glasgow. These glazed
ends also expose the jagged section of the roof.
However, opening the ends involved a little
“structural trickery,” according to Mangelsdorf.
The mullions behind the glass are actually
structural columns holding up the ends of the roof.
These columns feature hollow sections and are
just under 2" thick in elevation, but they are
actually relatively deep. “When you look out the
window, you don’t actually see that they’re quite
chunky, because you see the short side,” explains
Mangelsdorf.
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The design team used three-dimensional software
to work out the specifics of the structure required
to support such a complex form. The architect
defined the inner and outer envelope in CATIA,
and Buro Happold used Rhino to visualize and
analyse their structural design. They articulated
the connections between members with Tekla, a
program also used by the steelwork fabricator.

The Riverside Museum received a Structural Steel

Design Awards 2010 Certificate of Merit. This
award is sponsored by The British Constructional
Steelwork Association Ltd and Corus Long
Products.

Supporting an expressive design by Zaha Hadid is

surely no easy feat, but careful collaboration
between the architect Hadid and engineer Buro
Happold ensured that attention will remain on the
building’s form and exhibitions, rather than the
sleight of structure just beneath its surface. Thanks
to its seeming simplicity, the building remains still
and stable while appearing to be in constant
motion, much like the locomotives, cars, and
buses it was built to house.

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2) The Oculus (The World Trade Centre Transportation Hub), New York, USA

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3)Heydar Aliyev Center, Baku, Azerbaijan

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