Hartford Civic Arena Roof Collapse Group 16

Overview: Introduction. Structural design. Causes of collapse. Conclusions. Sources.

Introduction. Collapse occurred 18th of January 1978 Large snowstorm. The roof collapsed while Arena was not in use. No fatalities or injuries.

Structural design: Fraoli, Blum & Yesselman, Engineers were employed to design arena. The engineers used an innovative design. It was based on space frame design. Spanning 91.44m x 109.72m. 25.29m above floor level. The predicted deflection = 330.2mm at midpoint and 150mm at edges.

Structural design: Differed from standard space frame design: Cross-shaped built up sections used. Top horizontal bars intersected at different points to diagonal bars rather than at the same point. Short posts on the nodes supported the roofing panels. Four columns were 13.71m inside roof edges. The space frame was not pre-chambered.

Structural design: Diagrams;

Causes of collapse: Three contributary factors Structural design. Construction. Project Management.

Structural design: Cross-shaped members. Intersection of top horizontal and diagonal bars, not connected at the same point. Inaccurate computer analysis, torsional buckling not considered. Top layer’s interior and exterior compression members overloaded. Very little redundancy. No independent recheck of structural design.

Project management; No overall project manager responsible for the entire project. No qualified structural engineer employed to perform inspections of structure during construction. Overall, no hierarchy of responsibility

Construction: Connections were not fabricated or assembled to design specifications. Excessive deflections noted on ground assembly. After frame was complete, deflection was measured to be twice that predicted by computer analysis (660.4mm). No responsibility taken by contractor towards the performance of the project.

Conclusions: Employ Project Manager to take responsibility for entire project. Employ Qualified Structural Engineer to investigate and report structural deficiencies. Recheck design calculations and analysis, when unexpected deformations occur. Investigate any possible structural deficiencies. Include as large amount of redundancy as is feasible. Independently check design calculations.

Sources: Hartford Civic Arena Roof Collapse. Rachel Martin. Probability-Based Load Criteria for Structural Design. Bruce R. Ellingwood. Failure Case Studies in Civil Engineering Education.