Istanbul New Airport Terminal Building Designed with ProtaStructure
Prota Engineering’s engineering and BIM teams used ProtaStructure throughout the entire Istanbul New Airport Terminal Building design phases in order to produce fast and safe models which also minimizes human errors.
Overview
International Engineering and BIM Consultant, Prota Engineering worked on the structural design of the main passenger terminal building for the Istanbul New Airport. Appointed by the strong consortium of Cengiz, Kolin, Limak, MAPA and Kalyon, the design services had to be delivered to meet the extremely tight schedule requirements of the client.
The Istanbul New Airport was designed as a modern and highly functional space, with a unique sense of identity. Despite its huge size, the terminal building was conceived to harmoniously integrate with its surrounds, with a clear horizontal expression. Prota Engineering delivered entire seismic and structural design services of the project.
About The Project: Istanbul New Airport
Based on the Black Sea coast, 35 km outside Istanbul, this ambitious airport development is the largest single investment in Turkey. Istanbul New Airport was designed to be the busiest airport in the world, serving 70 million passengers in its first year and growing to over 150 million passengers per year during its first 25 years of operation. The airport is a major international hub connecting flights to more than 350 destinations around the world.
The terminal building is the world’s largest airport under one roof, with a gross floor area of more than 1,5 million square meters.
The Challenges
Given the extremely aggressive timeline to deliver economical and accurate design for this massive project were the key challenges Prota Engineering faced. In addition, the terminal building of the world’s largest airport terminal was structurally very complex. The architectural form of the modern airport threw up a number of interesting engineering challenges, including the extensive use of curved facades, complex shape of the steel roof and transfer slabs resulting from differing structural grids.
Airport consists of a main terminal block and 5 pier blocks. Central block has a “T” shape with plan dimensions of 760m x 414m (260,000 m2) Typical floor height is 10 m and steel roof structure is supported at column tips at an elevation of 32 m. Terminal block and pier blocks have a reinforced concrete frame structural system with precast slab panels. Partial mezzanine floors are designed with steel frame and composite decks. The structure sits on raft foundation with column capitals (and piles in fill areas). The roof system is designed with steel trusses and members.
However, as is often the case, the more complex the structure, the more beneficial software becomes and by taking advantage of the integrated building design approach with ProtaStructure. Prota Engineering’s engineering and BIM teams used ProtaStructure throughout the entire design phases of the project in order to produce fast and safe models which also minimizes human errors.
Aydan Ozmen Chairman of the Board of Prota Engineering commented, “We are glad to be able to deliver the project ahead of time and satisfied the challenging demands of our client. It was amazing to witness how leading research and new technologies like ProtaStructure 2019 are making structural engineers lives easier.”
The Solution: Taking off With ProtaStructure
“ProtaStructure helped us reducing design time and increasing project profitability. The project cost was reduced more than 50% thanks to fast, accurate and automated design/modelling tools of ProtaStructure.“
— Gulsah SAGBAS Structural Team Leader
Sagbas also added, “ProtaStructure is the right tool to make accurate models, to automate our steel and concrete design and to produce high quality drawings and design documentation in accordance with the required earthquake and design regulations. We prefer to use ProtaStructure throughout the entire life-cycle of our superstructure projects like airports, residential buildings, hospitals, shopping malls and always achieve greater and positive results.”
Results
ProtaStructure’s Structural BIM design capabilities paved the way for project success by;
- Enabling the assessment of different design alternatives thanks to rapid model development and checking,
- Delivering fully automated code-based design and specialized earthquake detailing,
- Facilitating BIM integration and coordination with project team,
- Simultaneous modelling and design with model merge functionality
- Significantly reducing the drafting effort by fully automated code-based detailing
- Automated generation of concise multi-language calculation reports that facilitated technical communication among different design teams.