Shuter Street Bridge in Toronto, Canada
Customer Project
Since March 2011, a glass pedestrian bridge with a length of 30 m connects the St. Michael hospital with the new research center Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute. The supporting structure consists of several oval steel rings which are twisted together. The bridge with a section height of 4.60 m and a width of 3.80 m was designed by Diamond and Schmitt Architects Inc. from Toronto.
| Structural Engineering |
Gartner Steel and Glass GmbH, Würzburg, Germany josef-gartner.permasteelisagroup.com Josef Gartner USA Chicago, USA |
| Architect |
Diamond and Schmitt Architects Inc. Toronto, Canada |
| Test |
Carruthers & Wallace Ltd. Toronto, Canada |
| Investor |
St. Michael's Hospital Toronto, Canada |
Model
As people in Toronto are mainly using the PATH system, an underground system of pedestrian paths, extending over a length of 28 km, the town could be persuaded to grant the permit only by architectural originality. Lightness of the bridge is reached by curved and thermally prestressed panes of insulated glass as well as curved pipes crossing each other, all together forming the supporting structure, and thus the construction appears differently each time you see it from another perspective.
Structure
The bridge was designed as a statically determinate framework because of different building movements and the requirement that introducing major forces into the building structure is not allowed. The fixed point, and thus the transfer of horizontal forces, was put to the side of the old building. The cross‑section of the bridge is elliptic. The supporting tube is formed by a large number of circular, parallel lying pipes intersecting circular pipes which are lying parallel in the opposite direction.
Design
Engineers were able to design the bridge according to DIN 18800 as it was agreed with the local test engineer. Loading, however, was determined and taken into account in accordance with local standards.
The bridge was calculated non-linearly as a 3D model in RSTAB. As the complete construction is welded, an equivalent model was used to determine the effective stiffnesses of nodes for the analysis of deformations.
Then, nodal stiffnesses were built as releases into the RSTAB model. Furthermore, the deformation and stress design ratio of the total structure were determined. Finally, the most critical welding nodes were designed in RFEM using the calculated internal forces.
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The limit stresses in RF-/STEEL can be user-defined for each thickness range.
SHAPE-THIN determines the effective cross-sections according to EN 1993-1-3 and EN 1993-1-5 for cold-formed sections. You can optionally check the geometric conditions for the applicability of the standard specified in EN 1993‑1‑3, Section 5.2.
The effects of local plate buckling are considered according to the method of reduced widths and the possible buckling of stiffeners (instability) is considered for stiffened sections according to EN 1993-1-3, Section 5.5.
As an option, you can perform an iterative calculation to optimize the effective cross-section.
You can display the effective cross-sections graphically.
Read more about designing cold-formed sections with SHAPE-THIN and RF-/STEEL Cold-Formed Sections in this technical article: Design of a Thin-Walled, Cold-Formed C-Section According to EN 1993-1-3.
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