Products and solutions Jul 3, 2009 11:00 AM
Emunds + Staudinger broad in the beam in Aachen
Getting right on target – this is Aachen’s motto not only on the pitch, but also in the construction of its new, modern stadium. This applies particularly to the search for a shoring professional with innovative solutions to support a trench with an unusual width of almost 20 m.
The new Tivoli soccer stadium will accommodate 32,900 fans. This combination of steel, concrete and glass in the club’s colours is being built in Krefelder Strasse, framed by the Aachener Soers show-jumping stadium and the ice rink. A suitable multi-storey car park, training pitches and so-called project space for sports retailers and hotels are also included in the extensive contract.
It goes without saying that this challenging project was open to international bidders, with the contract finally being awarded to the Hellmich Group. For the civil engineering work on site, the general contractor resorted to its long-standing partnership with Emunds + Staudinger (E+S). This specialist in civil engineering projects has almost 60 years of experience with trench shoring systems during which it has always endeavoured to match growing expectations of safety and economy. E+S has responded to this challenge by having its existing product range constantly refined by its own technical department and offering new systems and custom solutions for special construction tasks. To this end, the customer is involved in planning very early on in the project and served by E+S field staff – as in this case of the construction of the new Aachen stadium.
“I’ve known field agent Wilhelm Hess for a long time now. We’ve worked together on a huge range of construction projects and searched for technically appropriate and the most cost-effective solutions,” says Rolf Busch, Hellmich’s project manager in Aachen. “For me it’s important that I can depend on E+S, particularly on such tightly scheduled projects as this one. Remember, the first home match of the 2009/2010 season is due to be played in the new stadium!”
The dimensions of the trench for the pedestrian tunnel through which the players will ultimately reach the pitch from the changing rooms posed a particular challenge. The L-shaped trench is almost 20 m wide in one area and almost 50 m long. This is followed by a square area measuring roughly 18 x 18 m.
“To secure a trench of this size, our overlapping linear shoring is technically and cost-wise the ideal product,” confirms Dipl.-Ing. Wilhelm Hess, who worked closely with project management. The originally envisaged trench shoring, a back-anchored wall of sheet piling, was thus replaced by a custom solution developed in cooperation with Hellmich to enable the large-scale trench to be supported with linear shoring, technically the best and most cost-effective solution.
New from E+S: Shoring for trenches up to 20 m wide
For reasons associated with the width extension elements and the installation and removal processes, slide rail/linear shoring systems have only been suitable until now for widths of up to about 10 m. Thanks to the rigid connection of the width extension elements to the roller units, parallel alignment is ensured for a constant width between the soldiers and panels both during installation and removal. For widths in excess of about 10 m, the HEB girders conventionally used as extension elements have an unfavourable ratio of weight to rigidity on exposure to perpendicular and transverse forces.
This has a detrimental effect on the process, as the elements’ high weight discharges high bending moments via the threaded joints into the roller units.
Instead, thanks to their excellent ratio of weight to rigidity on exposure to perpendicular forces, triangular spreader frames have been used for the first time as width extension elements for E+S linear shoring. As a result, it is now possible to shore widths of almost 20 m – a feat virtually inconceivable with slide rail systems. The drawback of these frames, i.e. their articulated rather than torsionally rigid connection to the roller unit, was overcome by adopting a customized approach. This involved using two excavators working in parallel during shoring installation and removal, simultaneously lowering and extracting linear shoring soldiers, roller units and plates alternately on either side.
The roller unit employed was the extremely free-running U-type roller unit with the largest vertical pipe clearance of all systems available on the market.
Depending on requirements, the roller unit can be steplessly adjusted in height to meet the needs of static loading at the various stages of the process. On completion of the base slab, which also served as the support for the base of the soldiers, the U-type roller units were accordingly raised together with the triangular spreader frames so that the pedestrian tunnel proper with about 5 m of headroom could be constructed beneath the spreaders.
The construction work was thus executed to the client’s complete satisfaction – partly because the job was completed ahead of the originally specified deadline thanks to the use of Emunds + Staudinger shoring systems. The formula “E+S = efficiency, speed and quality = appreciable reductions in costs” certainly added up on this project!