Exercises

Fig.1 Historic amd new timber bridge in Hergiswald

Exam Summer 2014

As the old Hergiswald Bridge by Jospeh Ritter from 1791 no longer met the latest requirements, the municipality of Kriens planned a bypass to the north of the old bridge, and in 2009, called for a competition to design a new bridge. The new bridge, designed by a team of civil engineers around Fuerst Laffranchi together with Ilg Santer Architects, relates in form and materialization to the adjacent historic bridge. The bridge beam with a bottom chord in tension is a reflection of the compression arch of the old bridge. The key structural elements of the new bridge are kept in timber as in the historic bridge.

EstÃ¡dio Municipal de Braga, Portugal

Exam Winter 2014

The football stadium in Braga, Portugal, was designed by Eduardo Souto de Moura for the 2004 European championship in Portugal. It can accommodate 30'000 spectators. The stadium was carved from a quarry that overlooks the city of Braga. Due to this specific location, the longitudinal sides of the football pitch are framed by two steep grandstands while the short sides remain open, facing the rock walls of the quarry at one end and the sprawling city at the other. The steel cables of the hanging roof span between the two grandstands. The roof covering the grandstands consists of precast concrete panels which are supported by these cables.

Paavo Nurmen Stadium, Turku, Finland

Exam Summer 2013

The grandstand roof of the Paavo Nurmen stadium in Turku, Finland, was designed by the Finnish architecture office NRT in 1981 as part of an architectural competition and completed in 1989. The stadium can accommodate 13000 spectators and is mainly used for football matches and athletics competitions. The covered grandstand with a total of 4000 seats and a roof overhang of 17.5 m had to appear as light and transparent as possible to not disrupt the continuity of the surrounding park. The task is to calculate two different structure types for the existing structure: a truss and a cable-stayed structure.

B&B administration building, Novedrate, Italy

Exam Winter 2013

The task is to explore alternative load-bearing structure types for an existing building: an arch structure, a hanging cable structure and a cable-stayed structure. The different structure types in the three parts of the exercise are required to span 30 m. The existing building is the B&B Italia administration building in Novedrate, Italy. It was designed and constructed by Renzo Piano in the years 1971 â€“ 1973.

Maintenance hall, airport Frankfurt am Main

Exam Summer 2012

The Lufthansa Maintenance Hangar V at Frankfurt Airport has a spectacular form that results directly from the load-bearing structure, which consists of two suspended roofs. The thin pre-stressed concrete bands forming the roof surface are supported by cables spanning between large truss-like support structures. The task is to find the shape of a cable supported suspended roof taking into account its dead load and applicable live loads and to calculate the forces in the support structures.

Arch bridge, Almonte, Spain

Exam Winter 2012

In this exercise a graphic statics-based approach to the design of an arch bridge is discussed. The requirements for the final bridge as well as the requirements during construction are considered. The task is to find the shape of a concrete arch bridge with a span of 60 m taking into account the dead load of the bridge and to calculate the supporting structure used during construction. The form of the arch is determined by the forces acting upon it. Diaphragm walls of different heights transmit the uniformly distributed load of the bridge deck to the arch.

Shaping trusses

The goal of this exercise is to understand which parameters play a role in the structural behaviour of a truss, and to learn how these parameters can be modified to optimize a truss for specific circumstances.