Airplane Assembly Plant

2012 Design Award Winner

Location
North Charleston, SC

Structural Engineer
CMC Cary Engineering

Architect
BRPH

Steel Joist Manufacturer
CMC Joist & Deck

Steel Fabricator
CMC South Carolina Steel and FabArc

Boeing’s new factory in North Charleston, SC is 697,000sf with a 1,037′ x 640′ column free factory floor. The 640′ clear span roof supports four 40 ton under-hung crane carriers with twelve different crane bridges. The factory area has a clear height of 87′. The assembly floor is book-ended by 75’x1,000′ x 5 story towers that house office and factory support services. The column free area can support (11) football fields.

The roof structure is comprised of open web joists spanning between sway trusses. The sway trusses span 100′ and are supported by the main trusses. The building is comprised of 18,000 tons of structural steel. It was designed, fabricated and erected in 10 months.

Using a steel joist system enabled the erector to panelize much of the roof structure. This allowed most of the work to be down near the ground level and expedited the erection schedule.

Airport Hangar

Transportation

Key Aviation at Anoka, MN, airport was the name of the project. The Owner requested a 76,000sf hangar for private jets. By changing the system from metal fab building to structural long span and precast, we where able to save over $500,000 in cost and reduce delivery time by 2 months.

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Airport Terminal & New Concourse

Transportation

The scope of this project included the terminal, concourses and entry canopy for the new Indianapolis Airport. The roof is uniquely shaped consisting of a saddle shaped double curve in one direction and a single curve in the other direction with two-way exposed steel trusses supporting a grid of fifty six foot long curved joists that make up the secondary framing. The joist system serves several functions in addition to carrying the vertical gravity loads. They were designed to laterally brace the top chords of the primary trusses and the bridging system was designed to torsionally brace the perimeter girder of the roof.

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JetBlue Airways Airport Terminal

Transportation

This project provided a complete unit airline terminal with 28 gates and 465,000 total square feet of area. Joist framing for the roof structures allowed the designers to design a maximum performance framing system with absolute minimum weight and cost. Open web joists and joist girders were used throughout with moment connections allowing these elements to be used in some locations as a part of the lateral load resisting system. Large (up to 80,000 pound) air handling units are supported on roof structures using paired open web joists. In the main ticketing hall the repetitive use of a single profile open web joist allowed the architect to express the structural system as an architectural element.

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