Creative Engineering for Fast-track Design
Abstract
When a world class stadium is designed to host the Euro 2004 international football championships, for a European football club steeped in history, it needs a dramatic and unique architecture to set it apart from other similar venues. Added to this, the need to cover 65,000 seats with uninterrupted views serves to drive forward the design of major structures to span the immense spaces below. The structure of the roof of the new Benfica Stadium has provided a striking but elegant and efficient response to these prerequisites.
In this paper the development of the roof scheme on a fast track design construction programme is discussed. The design addressed the need to progress the construction of the stand structures below whilst final analyses of the structural steelwork were completed. Earthquake and temperature effects have been incorporated into the design and comprehensive analyses carried out to fully address second order effects and overall buckling failure mechanisms.