Overview

The Ferring International Centre comprises two buildings both built on a two storey reinforced concrete basement sub-structure. A three storey low-level building houses research laboratories, and an 80m tall, twenty storey tower provides office accommodation. Loads from the braced steel frame of the tower are transferred via sixteen main columns and anchored into the concrete basement using holding-down bolts. Maximum tensile and compressive reactions of 3,300 and 11,300 kN, respectively are accommodated.

The tower basement consists of cast in-situ reinforced concrete walls of 350mm thickness externally and 500mm thickness internally. Precast concrete units are also used. The basement houses technical installations, provides changing rooms for the employees and also functions as a safety shelter. Because of this, the modelling is complicated due to the large number of openings in the walls that are required to accommodate the multi-functional use of the structure.

Modelling

Using LUSAS Civil & Structural, Moe & Brødsgaard’s engineers created a 3D model of the basement structure using thick shell elements to model the concrete walls and slabs. Tower loadings due to dead and wind loads were applied and linear elastic forces and plots of stress distribution in the basement were obtained. The results were used to verify the structural capacity and compliance of the design with Danish codes of practice.