Design of Sydney Olympic Stadium
Abstract
Increasingly, crowd-induced vibration is seen as an important issue in the design of assembly occupancies, especially large stadia, which are used for pop concerts, involving rhythmic activity, as well as sporting events. This paper presents an overview of an investigation undertaken by Sinclair Knight Merz into the response of the Sydney Olympic Stadium due to crowd-induced vibration.
The first part of the investigation involved the construction of a finite element model of the stadium which was subjected to dynamic loading to simulate the likely response of the structure to concert loads. The vibration responses were evaluated in terms of design specifications based on the Canadian Building Code. The results of these simulations, and a review of crowd-induced vibration in the literature, were used to develop the original stadium design to reduce predicted vibration responses. The design approach, together with the final design and its implementation are described in the paper.
The second part of the investigation involved the subsequent testing of the structure during a concert performance. Accelerations were recorded at ten locations on the structure over the duration of the concert and the structure was shown to meet the performance requirements for crowd-induced vibration.
Authors
Graham Brown, Peter Erdmanis, Ross Emslie & David Hanson