INGLES I Nombre y Apellido:

Prof. Mariana Carro Especialidad: Ingeniería Civil

Lea detenidamente el texto y responde a las siguientes preguntas:

1- ¿En qué se inspiraron los especialistas para diseñar el estadio Mbombela?
2- ¿De qué manera se trató de controlar los costos de construcción?
3- ¿Qué tiene de especial el techo en este estadio de football’
4- Explica con tus palabras el hecho que la estructura fue diseñada “on dynamic
performance under crowd loading”
5- Traduce al castellano las oraciones subrayadas en el texto.

World Cup 2010: Jungle genius

10 June 2010 | By NCE Editorial

Designers of the Mbombela Stadium,

which stages its first World Cup match
next week, took their inspiration from
African animals in the nearby game
reserve.

The Honduras versus Chile match on 16

June may not be a glamour tie but it will
be the first competitive match at the
iconic Mbombela Stadium in Nelspruit.

Mbombela Stadium is the most intimate

and compact of all the World Cup venues with 43,500 seats arranged in a three-tiered
bowl. At £66M it is also the most cost effective of all the 2010 stadiums in terms of per-
seat cost.

Working with South African architect R&L and lead engineer Goba, Mott MacDonald
was responsible for the stadium’s super-efficient roof and for the dynamic analysis of
the stadium bowl. The lightweight roof structure is composed of steel trusses with
primary trusses cantilevering 40m from concrete piers surrounding the stadium.

When the project kicked off, world steel prices were soaring and the structural engineers
set out to control costs by minimising the quantity of steel used in the roof’s
construction.

“We went through a number of design iterations with R&L, each time refining the
design to increase efficiency,” says Mott MacDonald project manager Paul Officer.
The result is a roof weighing less than half as much as the
average trussed stadium roof - just 55kg/m2 - setting new
standards for structural efficiency.

Costs were controlled further by using local products.

“That meant we didn’t get hammered by import tax. For
example, the roof is 100% fabricated in South Africa,”
explains Officer.

The roof was designed so that relatively large modules could be assembled on the
ground. These were then lifted into position and supported on temporary scaffolding
towers while bolted connections were made. “We wanted a structure that was easy, safe
and quick to put up,” says Officer.

Structural requirements were given an African

twist to give the stadium an iconic local identity.
“We took inspiration from the nearby Kruger Park
game reserve, which is a stone’s throw from the
stadium,” he says.

“The 18 roof supports have been sculpted to

resemble giraffes - structural requirements gave
the supports four legs and tall slender form, so it
was screaming out to be done.”

Meanwhile, the black and white seats have been arranged in zebra-like stripes. Mott
MacDonald also advise Goba, which designed the bowl structure, on dynamic
performance under crowd loading.

“What you don’t want is terracing that starts bouncing when the crowd jumps up and
down - if there’s too much movement people can think the stadium’s going to collapse
and they panic,” says Officer.

“All structures vibrate a bit, so what you’re aiming to create is terracing where the
natural frequency won’t synchronise with a crowd leaping around, and that damps
movement quickly.”

Construction started in February 2007 and the stadium was completed in November
2009. The building phase alone took a massive 5.5M man-hours, with up to 1,400
workers on site at any one time.

It is a measure of the expert management that the most serious injury was a broken
ankle. This was despite a violent electrical storm which sent a crane crashing into the
stadium roof.

Fortunately the site was closed at the time. Although the crane took out an entire section
between supports, adjacent sections were unscathed, proving the design’s robustness.