Innovative connection design at Jakarta Velodrome
by
Mott MacDonald
Mott MacDonald – a global engineering, management, and development consultancy firm – has been our customer since January 2017 in the UK, and used IDEA StatiCa extensively to analyse and design complex, earthquake-resistant connections for this iconic and very challenging project: The Jakarta International Velodrome, a venue for the 18th Asian Games of 2018.
About the Velodrome
Jakarta International Velodrome was constructed for the 18th Asian Games in August 2018. It will be a permanent, fully enclosed venue with a Union Cyclist International (UCI) standard timber track designed by track specialist Ralph Schuerman. Programme and cost were critical to the delivery of the Velodrome, with a compressed two-year design and programme, and a budget of $40m, half that of a typical UCI standard Velodrome.
The challenge was taken on by contractor ES Global, a global leader in temporary venue construction, with Cox Architects and Mott MacDonald providing the necessary design expertise to deliver this challenging brief.
One of the challenging aspects of this project was the reuse of existing stock components for the roof structure of the Velodrome, already successfully used on several temporary building projects in the past, most notably the London 2012 Olympic Shooting, the Royal Artillery Barracks; and Water Polo venues.
Design workflow and BIM collaboration
This project was the perfect example of Efficient design processes using digital technology, and BIM collaboration. Both were essential to the success of this project, especially because the design team was spread across five counties and three continents, and the flow of digital design information had to be seamless to remain on programme.
Mott MacDonald set up a common data environment using Projectwise, to which all of the design team, including the architect and contractor, were able to access and share their digital design information. By using the same common data between the models, this also reduced the risk of potential coordination issues that could lead to delays on site or increased costs.
Autodesk products were used for the architectural and structural design of the main structure, and REVIT was used as the central platform and data management tool, to exchange information between different analysis models. By using the same model to derive these analysis models, Mott MacDonald enabled truly integrated design, for example, the integration of air supply ducts within the structure, which also doubled up as acoustic baffles.
IDEA StatiCa was, of course, a part of this collaborative workflows, and with the help of the BIM links with Autodesk products like Robot and REVIT, the flow of information was seamless and saved a lot of time and effort.
Innovative design with IDEA StatiCa
Innovation was essential for this project, as there are few precedents for the use of modular design in long span, complex geometry sports venues. This required not only innovations in the design process but also in the services that Mott MacDonald provided. This included steelwork connection designs, temporary works design and erection analysis, which are not typically part of the building design scope.
As digital technology was central to the provision of these services, the use of IDEA StatiCa as an innovative finite element software to analyze and design complex, earthquake resistant connections, helped significantly to cut down the amount of modifications to the existing steelwork components when compared to traditional design techniques and thus saved time and money, but more importantly facilitated the reuse of pre-engineered elements from the London Olympic venues.
The BIM links with Autodesk products that are integrated into IDEA StatiCa, helped even more in achieving faster design workflows: the joint configurations were imported from Autodesk Robot, (meaning the member cross sections and orientation, and the forces), and then they were designed and checked in IDEA StatiCa. The design details were feedback in AutoCAD, where the detailed model and drawings that are necessary for the installation were created.
Watch our webinar to see how this connection is modeled & checked
The complete workflow of modeling, loading, and checking of this connection has been presented in one of the Connection Wednesdays series of webinars on 29/11/2017.
About Mott MacDonald:
Mott MacDonald is a global engineering, management, and development consultancy, active in 150 countries – practically in every aspect of the AEC industry – and ranked in 13th place of the Top 225 International Design Firms globally for 2017. They have been our customer since January 2017 and of course is one of our biggest customers in the UK
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