1818x
001072
2016-02-25

"Salvador Allende" Gym in Cavezzo, Italy

Cavezzo was one of the towns in the region of Emilia-Romagna damaged by the 2012 earthquake.

As a result of this event, many public and private structures were heavily damaged and became uninhabitable. The municipal gym incurred such serious damage that it was necessary to completely demolish the existing reinforced concrete structure.

New Building Construction

The designer decided to rebuild the whole structure, using timber as the main material. It is a lighter solution and well suited to meet the main requirement of reopening the gym in the shortest possible time.

The building has a rectangular plan with dimensions of approximately W x L x H = 108 ft x 82 ft x 33 ft. The spacing between the frames made of glued-laminated timber amounts to approximately 21 ft. The bracing in the longitudinal direction is ensured by the presence of CLT panels appropriately fixed to the frame columns and the strip foundation.

The structure was modeled very accurately using rotational springs on the beam-column coupling as well as on the panel-panel and panel-member joints. The spring stiffness was calculated according to the connectors used in accordance with the current regulations. This allowed very accurate assessment of the behavior of the structure under dynamic actions.

The specific analytical functions offered by RFEM enabled getting the shear stresses in the plane between the CLT panels. In this way, the required bracing effect was ensured.

Due to the large forces involved, it was necessary to study a hybrid timber-steel joint with fully threaded screws. The real connection behavior was assessed with appropriate local analysis. Thanks to this process of refinement, it was possible to reduce the amount of hardware, such as the number of connectors and plates.

The ability to model the structure as a whole concrete-timber system has allowed the evaluation of the interaction between the two structures.



Project Specifications

Model data

Number of Nodes 125
Number of Lines 181
Number of Members 69
Number of Surfaces 12
Number of Load Cases 8
Number of Load Combinations 44
Number of Result Combinations 6
Total Weight 822.657 tons
Dimensions 128.2 x 82.81 x 32.15 feet
Program Version 5.06.10

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