Group 16
Ian Bray
Aodhin Mc Bride
John McElwee
Background
 Collapsed January 18th 1978 – 5 years after
construction
 Large snowstorm caused heavy loading
 Arena was not in use when roof collapsed
 No injuries or fatalities
Structural Design
 Fraoli, Blum & Yesselman, Engineers were
employed to design arena.
 Engineers used innovative space frame
design.
 Roof spanned 91.44m x 109.72m and at a
height of 25.29m above the ground.
How was it different?
 The top layer of this roof did not support
the roofing panels.
 The top horizontal bars did not intersect
at the same points
 Four pylon legs supported the roof .
 The configuration of the four steel angles
did not provide a good resistance to
buckling.
Saving money and time...
 used of a state-of-the-art computer analysis to verify
the safety of the building.
 The architect had tried twice to convince the owners to
hire a qualified structural engineer for continuous onsite inspection.
 roof frame was completely assembled on the ground.
Warnings of Failure
 Excessive deflections were noticed on numerous
occasions
 Inspection company
 Subcontractor
 Member of the public
 Each one was ignored
Construction
 Design allowable force ≠ built allowable force
 Mid point bracing omitted for top layer rods
 Spacing was double the designed amount
 Top bars experienced buckling as a result
Collapse
 Unexpected amount of snow
 Members of top truss buckled
 Resulted in all members buckling and structural
collapse
Conclusion
 Overconfidence in Computer Analysis
 Roof design extremely susceptible to buckling- not
analysed by computer
 Cut costs but at the expense of the structures stability
 Connections not assembled according to design
 No responsibility taken by contractor towards the
performance of the project
Project Management
 No overall responsibility for the project
 No structural engineer hired to inspect the roof frame
and connections
 Subcontractor questioned deflections as it was difficult
to connect steel frame,
“Deal with the problem or be responsible for delays”
 A year later, a member of public notified the engineer
of his concern at the obvious downward deflection of
the roof but was assured,
“Everything is fine”
Recommendations
 The computer is only an analytical tool and it is always
a good idea to inspect the building against the design
criteria
 If the horizontal and diagonal members intersected at
the same place it would have reduced the bending
stresses in these members
 The structure should have been built with more
redundancy so the failure of a few members would not
cause such a catastrophic collapse
Recommendations (cont.)
 The responsibility of the architects, engineers and
construction manager should be well defined
 There should be one person who ultimately is
responsible for the success of the project as a whole.
 One should re-check design calculations when
deformations occur
 Independent checks on design calculations should be
enforced
References
 Rachel Martin, Case study “Hartford Civic Centre
Arena Roof Collapse”
 J. Perf. Constr. Fac. Volume 15, Issue 1, pp. 31-36
(February 2001) ‘Another Look at Hartford Civic Center
Coliseum Collapse’.
 “Structural safety and its quality assurance” By Bruce
Ellingwood, Council on Tall Buildings and Urban
Habitat. Committee 9A/10, Structural Engineering
Institute