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The arena roof is part of the King Saud University Sport
Campus in Riyadh (Saudi Arabia) and it is the main
feature of the sport campus. The building is for indoor
athletics and also has the ability to hold conferences.
The basic form of this building consists of a large single
span roof with a central arch truss supporting secondary
trusses.
The steel structure covers an independently stabilised
reinforced concrete frame.
Steel roof
The roof structure can be summarised as follows:
• A steel arched truss with cords in HISTAR profiles
spanning 145 m between reinforced concrete
buttresses.
• Buttresses are formed from a series of
interconnecting shear walls with a thrust block above
and thick foundation below to underlying rock.
• Secondary arched trusses supported by the main
truss and parametrical columns.
• A perimeter flat ring connected to the end of the
arched truss and to the concrete buttress.
• The roof cladding is a light-weight complex with steel
sheets, insulation and water-tightness.
• The roof bracing has been divided into two parts in
order to avoid lock-in stresses.
The overall stability is provided mainly by the
buttresses. The main arch transfers the lateral loads
back to the buttresses through a combination of axial
thrust, minor axis and major axis bending and torsion.
The external part of the perimeter ring floats over the
concrete structure via pin-ended columns with free
displacement support made with Teflon.
Vertical loads from the main arch truss are transferred
back to the buttresses via axial thrust and major axis
bending.
Vertical loads acting on the perimeter ring are
transferred to the reinforced concrete structure via axial
loads in the parametrical columns.
Use of Scia Engineer
The model geometry was imported from a dxf file
provided by the client. The beams, hinges, support and
loads were then introduced. The layers manager was
really useful in this project for analysing the project
part by part. 3D exportation in dxf and pdf was used
for transmitting the sketch of the results, as column
displacement and reactions.
The predefined load library allowed for a quick
introduction of the loads. The wind loads curve tool was
used to model the evolution of the wind pressure all
along the height of the building.
For the analysis of the behaviour of the structure, we
used the deformed structure results. In fact, by using
a relative big scale factor, this tool shows how the
structure deflects and allows for locating the critical
points and also detecting if there is a non-symmetry (the
model is double symmetric, so its behaviour should also
be symmetric).
The very large document possibilities allowed for the
production of the calculation sheet and transmission of
information between the project actors.
The key numbers of the project
• 3,912 nodes
• 3,139 beams
• Numbers of profiles used: 80
• 820 tonnes of steel (S460, S460HISTAR, S355,
S235)
KSU Sports Campus - Riyad, Saudi Arabia
Software: Scia Engineer
Nomination Category 4: Special Projects
Nomination Category 4: Special Projects
