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Manchester City Stadium - Structural Case Study

The Etihad Stadium in Manchester, England has a capacity of 53,400. It has a distinctive toroidal roof structure held up by cables connected to 70m high masts. It was designed to host both sporting and non-sporting events. The roof and bowl structure were designed together to create a dynamic interior space that draws attention to the field of play. The cable net roof system resists wind and gravity loads through a pre-tensioned network of steel cables and rods connecting to the masts. Redundancy was built into the cable and foundation systems to prevent disproportionate collapse under extreme loads.

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Yuvan Seth
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3K views20 pages

Manchester City Stadium - Structural Case Study

The Etihad Stadium in Manchester, England has a capacity of 53,400. It has a distinctive toroidal roof structure held up by cables connected to 70m high masts. It was designed to host both sporting and non-sporting events. The roof and bowl structure were designed together to create a dynamic interior space that draws attention to the field of play. The cable net roof system resists wind and gravity loads through a pre-tensioned network of steel cables and rods connecting to the masts. Redundancy was built into the cable and foundation systems to prevent disproportionate collapse under extreme loads.

Uploaded by

Yuvan Seth
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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ETIHAD STADIUM Presented by

- Siri
- Tushar
- Tejal
- Yuvan
- Tapish
Introduction
The Manchester City Stadium in Manchester,
England is also known as Etihad Stadium for
sponsorship reasons.
Home ground for Manchester City Football club with
a domestic footfall capacity of 53,400.
Fifth-largest in the Premier League and Tenth-largest
in the United Kingdom.
The roller-coaster like roof, toroidal in shape, visible
from miles around with a similar lightweight canopy
that swoops up and down over the stands in one
almost continuous wave.
Held up together by a tensioned system of
thread-like cables connected to 70 m high masts.
Design Background
Designed to accommodate over 60,000 and to cater to
variety of sporting events as well as non sporting ones.
Initial design was for athletics events for Commonwealth
games, and was later converted to football stadium.
Design of stadium to be based on the type of event to be
hosted.
The required seating bias dictated a bowl with high sides
on the east and west and low ends north and south,
allowing a single roof geometry to cover all seating and
leaving large open areas in the corners for pitch
ventilation and video screens.
Bowl structure of
stadium
Geotechnical and geological
properties
The made ground was contaminated to varying degrees with hydrocarbons, heavy
metals, and waste containing obstructions from old foundations.

The site had several mineshafts, and in the master planning the Stadium was positioned
to avoid them (though there was the possibility of old unrecorded shafts). Shallow
groundwater was encountered below rock head

The coal workings were predominantly collapsed where encountered, probably from
longwall mining beneath (in which a cutting head moves back and forth along a coal
face)
Remedial Works
These were designed to mitigate the effects of the abnormal features previously
identified, and included large-scale earthworks to form the platform.

As for contamination, the levels of chemicals acceptable to be left with respect to end
use were agreed with the regulators. Several 'hotspots'. primarily hydrocarbons, were
identified, excavated and disposed offsite.

Of the total 250 000m3 of material excavated, however, only 10% left the site
Playing area and seating bowl -
Spatial concept
The toroidal geometry of the roof combines with
the radial plan geometry to create a rising and
falling perimeter, with the roof, visually
separated from the seating, projecting overhead
to create a dynamic space that draws the eye
into the field of play.

The result is a dramatic sweeping bowl curving


up to the highest points on the east and west
and then swooping down to the north and
south, forming the shape that encapsulates the
identity and image of the Stadium
Bowl Structure and form
The bowl has an in situ reinforced concrete primary
structure, on bored pile foundations. Coffered slabs form
the floors and precast concrete units create the terracing.
A typical radial grid spacing of 7.6m was adopted allowing
relatively open floor areas below.
On the outside of the building, the supporting structure of
the spiral access ramps also houses essential facilities, as
well as supporting the roof masts.
The exposed structure of the terracing forms the ceilings
of the three concourses, with the entrances expressed as
ramped or stepped gangways.
Construction of Roof
The roof plane steelwork was erected in parallel with the lifting of masts and
assembly and stressing of the cable-net.
Now cable-net was made taut by pulling down on the backstays and connecting
them to their pinned bases.
The cable net was in place from phase one and each roof panel was lifted into
position and supported from the rear of the bowl and hung from the cable net.
Roof structure - Structural Systems
The roof comprises two structural systems.
The first forms the roof surface, with radially arranged steel roof beams, supporting
l-section steel beams.
The second structural system or 'primary structure' is the network of high strength steel
cables and rods, along with the 12 masts from which the roof structure is hung.
This 3-dimensional network of cables and rods is called a 'cable-net'.
The cable-net structure resists the gravity, wind and lateral loads applied to the roof.
Challenges faced with Roof structure
The saddle profile of the roof gives rise to possible arching in roof plate.
Thermal expansion also posed a major concern and to handle this movement joints were
incorporated at regular intervals over the roof, by incorporating slotted holes in the purlins
and shoulder bolts.
Roof - Cladding
There are two distinct types of cladding:
Standing-seam aluminium cladding to the majority of the roof. This acts structurally to
support the aluminium standing seam roof sheeting as well as creating a hidden zone
for acoustic insulation, wiring, and in-plane roof bracing.
Transparent polycarbonate to the leading edge. This transparent zone increased the
amount of natural light entering the bowl
Rafter Design
Each rafter is supported at two points:
At the rear of the stadium, each rafter is
supported from the concrete bowl by an integral
V-strut formed by two inclined struts of circular
HSS.
Towards the leading edge, the rafter is effectively
hung from the cable net by means of the forestay
cables
The maximum rafter cantilever is 15 m (49’), and
the back span of a rafter is 37 m (121’).
Roof uplift
As with all lightweight roofs, wind induced uplift was one
of the most significant design criteria.
The stadium uses a method called “the grounded
tension ring/catenary cable”, an innovative adaptation
of the opposing cable solution.
This catenary cable links all the forestays together. At
each corner of the stadium this catenary cable is tied
back to the ground by four “corner tie cables.”
By pulling down at the four corners a tensile force can
be induced into the entire cable net.
The geometry of the cable net was defined in such a
way that this pretension force was exactly equal to the
force induced in the forestay cables under the
worst-case wind-uplift condition.
Back-stay and corner tie foundations
Fractured underlying bedrock

Anchors are installed into 35 m deep bored


holes

The rods and cables are anchored to the


ground by a foundation system, comprising
high strength steel multi-ground anchors

Each anchor is prestressed which limits the


tension load in concrete piles
Designing for robustness
Design for Robustness illustrates the relations between the design phase and real processes, such as
production and product use
The robustness requirements of Etihad Stadium were investigated thoroughly which lead to the use of
multiple cables:
Each backstay is made from 4 cables, attached to two discrete foundation plinths
Each corner tie is made from 4 cables
Extreme Emergency-load Cases
Stability of the four cable elements is maintained with any three remaining cables from the group of
four
The primary connections involving multiple cables, i.e. the mast heads, were designed taking into
account the eccentricities caused
Fire protection is provided inherently to the bowl, due to the use of reinforced concrete
The conclusion was that there is a sufficient degree of redundancy in the load paths, which will avoid
disproportionate collapse under extreme-loading conditions
Design of the stadium roof under service
conditions
The behavior of the roof was assessed for the following criteria:

Drainage Slope—The only gutter is located at the rear edge of the roof. Each rafter and
cladding panel was assessed such that there was always a positive fall of 1.5° under all
service-load conditions.

Visual Deformation—The performance of the rafters was maintained at 1:100 for the
cantilever and 1:200 for the back spans. However the overall total deflection was controlled
by the deflection of the cable net, which was also limited to 1:100.
Shear Strain and Warping—The shear strain
was measured as the change in angle, and
the warping was measured as the mean
change in distance.

Deflection in the rafters — It is controlled


largely by rigid body rotation caused by
extension of the backstays. The forestay
cable fans act as load-sharing devices with
respect to relative displacement between
rafters.
REFERENCES

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_Manchester_Stadium
- https://www.aisc.org/globalassets/modern-steel/archives/2003/12/2003v12_building_tension.pdf
- https://www.newsteelconstruction.com/wp/award-south-stand-expansion-etihad-stadium/
THANK YOU!

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