António Reis Nuno Lopes

Techn. Dir. GRID Consulting Engineers Civil Engineer, GRID Consulting Engineers
Professor, Technical University of Lisbon Lisbon, Portugal.
Lisbon, Portugal. e-mail: nuno.lopes@grid.pt
e-mail: antonio.reis@grid.pt phone: +351 21 319 12 20 Fax: +351 21 352 83 34
phone: +351 21 319 12 20 Fax: +351 21 352 83 34
Paulo Pimenta
António Campos e Matos Civil Engineer, GEG - Gabinete de Estruturas e Geotecnia,
GEG - Gabinete de Estruturas e Geotecnia. Oporto, Portugal.
Professor, Faculty of Engineering, University of Porto e-mail: ppimenta@geg.pt
Oporto, Portugal. phone: +351 22 557 32 40 Fax: +351 22 557 32 49
e-mail: acmatos@geg.pt
phone: +351 22 557 32 40 Fax: +351 22 557 32 49 Hugo Marques
Civil Engineer, GEG - Gabinete de Estruturas e Geotecnia
Oporto, Portugal.
e-mail: hmarques@geg.pt
phone: +351 22 557 32 40 Fax: +351 22 557 32 49

1 - INTRODUCTION
The European football championship in June 2004 in Portugal required the construction of several new
stadiums. One of the largest and most important stadia is the Dragon Stadium belonging to FCP- Futebol
Clube do Porto, with a capacity of 51000 and a roof covered area of 34233 m2. The stadium’s structure was
designed by the authors and was started building in 2001 and opened to the public in November 2003.
The covering material of the roof is made of polycarbonate plates. As far as we know this is the world largest
entirely polycarbonate roof. At the internal extreme section, the main plate girders of the roof are suspended
from two main arch trusses.
The stadium is a reinforced concrete structure with 6 floors above the Square level (floor 0) and 4 floors
buried in the east and south sides. The use of pre-stressing was extensively adopted as a solution for some
special cases such as cantilevers and large spans raging from 16 to 24m.

2 - THE ROOF: DESIGN CONCEPT

Covering all the area of the stands the roof of this stadium extends by 6,0m radially from the external
contour, as shown in Fig. 1.

Fig. 1 – Dragon Stadium: Plan of the roof and cross section

From the external contour to the internal contour, the width varies from 57,5 m to 78m from the entrance
zone (zone A) to the zone of the higher level of the stands (zone B) respectively. All the roof structure is a
steel structure made of a series of main plate girders A1 to A17 (Fig. 1), about 9m distance apart which
support the cross beams made of hot rolled IPE 330, and welded plate sections, which support the purlins. At
zone A (Fig. 1) the main girders A1 to A4 and the transversal beams VT1 to VT4 define a grid system, made
of welded sections and rigid bolted connections. At zone B, the main plate girders (A6 to A17) are supported
at back on steel tubular columns (CHS711 mm) transferring the loads to the concrete structure; at the other
extreme section, the plate girders are suspended from two main arch trusses (Fig. 2) rigidly connected at the
two concrete towers.

Fig. 2 – General View of the Dragon Stadium.

The span of the arches is about 180,5.m; the height of the trusses varies between 5,29m at the support section
and 10,8m at the mid span section. These arches are plane trusses made of circular hollow sections
(Diameters 324 to 711mm, t = 8 to 30mm) in steel S355J2H (EN10210).
The in-plan bracing of the roof is insured by two bracing systems (Fig. 1). An expansion joint, for
displacements with amplitude up to 50mm, was introduced in zone A (Fig. 3) by adopting a simply
supported span between the main plate girders A1.
Wind actions have been quantified by wind tunnel tests (1/200 scale) and test results were introduced in the
finite element models of the structures in order to perform the dynamic analyses. The Eurocode 3 (EC3) was
adopted for the steelwork design. The maximum design gust wind speeds are of the order of 40 to 44 m/s.
The dynamic wind actions were defined taking into consideration the background and resonant responses.

Fig. 3 – Dragon stadium: Zones A (during construction) and B.

3 - ERECTION OF THE ROOF

The most complex construction aspect was the erection of the roof. The camber was introduced to
compensate the deflections due to the dead load of the roof.
Only the nodes at the end sections of the main girders, i.e., at the inner contour, were supported on temporary
columns. Of particular relevance in the erection plan is the removal of the temporary supports under the
arches. To warranty the initial design values of the reaction forces of the arches, hydraulic jacks were
adopted at the connection of the lower chords to the concrete tower to adjust the geometry and the forces
before a high strength grout be introduced between the bearing plates and the concrete.
A monitoring system was adopted during erection. The calculated and measured values for the nodal
displacements of the arches have shown a good agreement.
4 - CONCRETE STRUCTURES
The resistant concrete structures of the stadium are essentially constituted by main radial frames that are
connected among them by horizontal circumferential beams, at the pavement level, contributing equally to
the pavements support. Without loss of seismic resistance and with the purpose of, in service conditions,
minimize the effects associated to the concrete shrinkage and at the temperature variations, the stadium is
divided in 12 independent structures separated by expansion joints. The horizontal stiffness necessary to the
transmission of forces due to wind and earthquake to the frame system is assured by the floors. The floor
solution consists in a concrete two-way slab integrating a precast and prestressed slab of reduced thickness (6
cm) upon which was casted a complementary concrete layer to complete the final 24 cm slab.

Fig. 4– Dragon stadium - east grandstand

The reduced period for the construction and limited space of the stadium site, among others constraints,
justified the intensive use of precast elements. The terrace units that form the tiers are in precast concrete.
These elements are supported by the inclined beams integrated in radial frames, being elements with a span
which varies as the parting between frames increase to the periphery from 8,5m to 10,5m. The entrances are
also precast elements that are supported by a grid of beams. In the stadium Southeast elevation is located an
accesses system integrating 4 stairs. For the support of this stairs was necessary to develop a structure
integrating HEB650 beams and precast stairs elements, 8,9m wide, throughout an extension of about 350m.
Others examples of precast units are the floors, walls, precast steps and other architectural elements.
The access to the superior tier is done in the four corners of the tiers, by two stairs of great dimension
supported in a concrete wall with 25cm of thickness and a length of 56m, which is, by its turn, supported by
prestressed cantilever beams with 6,30m of span.

Fig. 5 – Access to the superior tier

Being a multipurpose building some facilities impose the suppression of columns in the low floor for the
concretisation of several spaces like the Health-Club pool, the sporting installations with a 28x18,5m2 field
or a multi-use room with a 256m2, being the columns supported by ten prestressed beams that overcome a
24m span and six also prestressed beams that overcome a 16m span.
The higher standards required by users, in the particular case of stadia, led to better sight lines for spectators
with the cost previously related. On the other hand, a change on the behaviour of the assistance of public
events is currently evident being more vivid than before. The importance of the dynamic actions induced by
groups of people with synchronous movements justifies the necessity to perform dynamic analysis in the
corresponding structural elements. To confirm the satisfactory performance of the structure, this analysis was
followed by the monitoring of two events in the grandstand during operation.

5 - CONCLUSIONS

The main design options for the roof and stands structures of the new Dragon Stadium, in Oporto, have been
discussed.
Some of the particular issues about large span roofs were considered, like dynamic behaviour under wind
loads and erection schemes procedures.
An approach to the structural performance under crowd loading, particularly dynamic response of stands’
structure was made, as well as some special structural solutions to fulfil architectural demands.

REFERENCES:
[1] A.J.Reis –“Stadiums for Euro 2004: A variety of roof structures” – IABSE, Melbourne, 2002.
[2] M.Wieland, N.Isyumov and R.T.Edey: “Wind action on the new Congress Centre,
Lucerne,Switzerland”.
[3] A.G.Davenport, E.Holm, D.Surry: “The definition of steady and fluctuating wind loads on large span
roofs”
[4] LNEC-“Acção do vento na cobertura do novo estádio do Futebol Clube do Porto, NT nº 10/02 –
NDA”, February 2002.

SEI Data Block

Owner:
Futebol Clube do Porto, Portugal
Structural Design:
GRID, Consulting Engineers - Lisbon, Portugal
GEG, Gabinete de Estruturas e Geotecnia - Oporto, Portugal
Contractors:
Somague, SA, Portugal
Steel (t): 3500
Concrete (m3): 89300
Total cost (EUR millions) 98
Service date: November 2003

Table of Figures
Fig. 1 – Dragon Stadium: Plan of the roof and cross section ............................................................................ 1
Fig. 2 – General View of the Dragon Stadium. ................................................................................................. 2
Fig. 3 – Dragon stadium: Zones A (during construction) and B. ...................................................................... 2
Fig. 4– Dragon stadium - east grandstand ......................................................................................................... 3
Fig. 5 – Access to the superior tier .................................................................................................................... 3