The
Gameco aircraft hangar is located at the new Baiyun Airport
in Guangzhou, China - a one and a half hour train journey
north west of Hong Kong. Construction began in 2001 and completion
is expected in 2004. Holmes design brief from Gameco included
the entire hangar superstructure. The main analysis, design
and documentation was undertaken by a team of 12 or so Holmes
engineers and draughtspeople lead by project director Graham
Voysey.
The
hangar covers a plan area of 28,000 sq m, measuring 350m in
length and 80m in width, with and internal clearance of 29m
between the floor and the underside of the front roof trusses.
Visualise this space as being large enough to fit Auckland’s
Skytower inside lengthways. In reality, it houses 4 Boeing
747’s wing tip to wing tip.
The
front trusses above the 3 hangar entrance doors, span 100m,
150m and 100m. The end of each front truss is supported on
a 5m x 3m insitu reinforced concrete column. Each column required
40 truckloads of concrete to complete.
All
of the structural roof steelwork weighs 4000 tonnes - this
includes 22km of roof purlins. The roof structure carries
560 tonnes of crane and maintenance equipment and docks.
The
scale of the project is impressive - compare its overall size
to the height of the worker standing adjacent to the concrete
column. |
