Entry Gate Tensile Canopy for UPL India.
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The Esteem Indian Multinational having Administration, Accounts, Purchase, contracting, sourcing office spread across 3 different Office Buildings. The client needed seamless movement from Main gate to all buildings & between each building in all weather.
The major need for the walkways is in harsh summer & monsoon.
More than 40 Cars were being parked in the same area. So the most important condition for the PVC Coated Tensile membrane roof being not to introduce any structural members hampering free movements of the vehicles Parked.
The Major challenges were mainly 2. Firstly there was no time slot or working space allotted for the structural fabrication or installations. So, only Sundays were free for any site related work.
Secondly the office buildings were added in phase manner & all the Buildings were converted from existing Residential Structure to office structure without Major changes except the main office building. The orientation & the size of all the 3 buildings were non Symmetrical & having different sizes. The structural drawings were not available for any of the 3 Buildings.
The whole Walkway area was divided into 3 major Parts. Main entry to Reception (Building 1), Building 1 to Building 2 , A walkway running Parallel to Building 2 for Movement between various Utility & Building 3. We Proposed standalone foundations for most of the supports, & the Major corner column & per ferial Beams were located for rest of the Anchor points for the PTFE tensile roof proposed.
Our Tensile Structure Manufacturer team proposed 2 Arches on Pin joints connected by prelim Members for 2 of the 3 walkways. Additional stability of the Arches was ensured through Struts supports from 2nd levels to the arches. Each pair of the Arches supported 2 fabric membrane cones each through radial Members supporting the Bail Rings.
The fabric with edges fixed at the Arch top edge through Aluminum Kedar profiles was proposed. Due to the curvature of the Arches & the Natural curvature of the 2 cones generated on the top of arches the water was directed towards the ends of the walkway fully, thereby eliminating water curtain affecting free movements of people in monsoon.
The Twin cones without any intermediate supports when modeled in FEM software , & Analyzed with wind , & live loads apart from the Priestess; introduced sizable Reaction forces in the end Pin joints. The Bending moments were kept in control thanks to Pin joints & struts .To keep member sizes for the Arches under control, Trusses were proposed to control material consumption.
After Staid Analysis the Main Columns were Fabricated from 219 Dia. X 8 mm hollow ERW pipes the rest of the members sizes varying from 45 mm to 135 mm hollow ERW pipes
The top ring Dia. 500 mm supported on Dia. 90 mm Mast which in turn was supported by 4 radial members from each of the corner, having Dia. 90 mm through a Sliding joint in the center to enable pretensioning while PTFE Tensile membrane installation.
The Ferrari 702 S 2 , PVC coated fabric was patterned Radically in all 32 parts/ 24 parts , depending on the size of the cone .To absorb higher stresses towards the Ring center the fabric was reinforced with another layer of 702 S 2 membrane patterned in floral shape .
For fixing the fabric edges to structural members extruded Aluminum profiles were used. Overall the total fabric was made in 3 parts.
One Sunday right from early in the morning to late in the night we could install all the 3 Fabric without any mechanical help like cranes or Hoist as there was no room for a crane to enter the area . The subsequent Pretensioning was carried out in next 2 days in working Hours only.
