Nowadays, modern expressways worldwide are becoming very important arteries for the quick and safe transportation of people and goods. Service centres are located along these roads for the convenience of drivers and passengers. Those centres consist of buildings and other infrastructure elements and provide various services. Usually, buildings represent contemporary trends in architecture and structural engineering. Steel and glass are widely used. This is also the case in Japan but, simultaneously, adequate approaches are being made to respect the country’s own traditions as well. This paper is a continuation of the authors’ previous publications [1], [2], [3] devoted, respectively, to buildings, railway stations and air terminals.

A 6500 m² glazed grid shell dome covers the Nazarbayev Centre in Astana, Kazakhstan. Located near the Presidential Palace, this futuristic building, designed by Foster Partners in London, is one of a whole series of prominent architectural buildings in Astana.
The 20° inclined glass roof spans across various levels of the reinforced concrete structure and slopes down to the north. The dome has a span of over 90 m and a rise of about 11 m. A sufficient in-plane stiffness of the rectangular grid of the dome is achieved by the rigidly connected rectangular hollow sections, which are framed by a strong circumferential edge beam. Connections of the grid and edge beam are bolted mainly as a means to cope with the ambitious time schedule that required fast erection during the strong Kazakh winter. By means of a statically determined support, the roof grid and edge beam of the glazed dome remain largely independent of the concrete structure’s long-term and deformation behavior. A major issue for the roof structure was the verification of global buckling of the dome. In order to minimize tolerances, all connection surfaces of bolt joints were CNC milled. This article summarizes the design philosophy of the dome steel grid and the relationship between glazed dome and main concrete structure.

Steel-and-glass structures for buildings, railway stations and airports are currently representatives of modern infrastructure worldwide. The first two, characteristic of Japan, have been discussed in previous articles [1], [2]. In this paper the authors look at Japanese air terminals.

The accelerating needs of communication have led to many modern railway stations made of steel and glass being built or upgraded all over the world during the last two decades. That trend, influenced by local architectural traditions, is clearly evident in Japan, too. This paper, focusing on that trend, is a continuation of the authors’ previous publication [1].

The design and manufacture of factory-made self-supporting sandwich panels are covered by European standard EN 14509. Two new European Recommendations extend the potential applications for the standard, providing information about the influence of openings on the loadbearing behaviour of the panels and about the possibility of supporting beams, purlins and cladding rails against stability failures. The new European Recommendations were prepared by the European Joint Committee on Sandwich Constructions.

This paper presents information about structural elements of the roof covering to the stadium in Gdan´sk built for the 2012 European Football Championship in Poland and the Ukraine. The paper discusses elements of the polycarbonate covering, the supporting structure and the drainage system. It also provides information about tests and research performed prior to construction, which determined the solutions adopted as well as the roof’s present and future condition.

The article describes a method for the probabilistic risk assessment of loadbearing bar structures according to second-order theory without having to indicate expressly the limit state equation. The load combination is also considered in the course of the calculation. Time-dependent loads are modelled as pulse processes with a rectangular form. The sequence of load renewals has a Poisson distribution and the magnitude of the load is subjected to a Pearson distribution. The distribution of the maximum values of the safety-relevant load reaction is obtained by means of the Monte Carlo simulation. The basis is a generalization of the deformation method. The probability of cross-section failure is determined for an exemplary loadbearing structure. The probability is sensitive to the distribution parameters of the processes. For certain loading constellations, this analysis contradicts the safety concept of building practice.

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The article presents results of reconstruction and new construction works at the National Sports Center ”Olympic“ stadium in the city of Kyiv, which are being performed in Ukraine as preparations for the final tournament of the UEFA European Football Championship 2012. It describes conceptual designs and layouts involved. Totaling data are presented concerning the number of spectators, the built-up areas, the infrastructure. Structural designs of steel and ferroconcrete constructions are described, results of their computational analysis are included The article also presents data regarding the manufacturing and erection of structures.

Steel construction is becoming increasingly popular in Southern Africa. Selected case studies of steel structures are presented and discussed here to support this statement. The discussion entails the extent to which the design of steel structures facilitates ease of construction. It is recognized that steel has been with us for some time and that most of the world’s spectacular bridges have taken advantage of the relative lightness of the material for long spans. More recently, high-rise steel-framed buildings have further demonstrated the versatility of steel. This is happening despite the fact that throughout its history, the steel industry has been dogged by high production costs, almost inevitably resulting in heavily subsidized steel. Dramatic improvements in process technology and a better understanding of the behaviour of structural steel coupled with an extensive market programme are now putting structural steel in its rightful place.

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The Modern Teahouse is a small nomadic building formTL designed together with Kengo Kuma. It is used for Japanese tea ceremonies in the garden of the ”Museum für Angewandte Kunst” in Frankfurt am Main. The mattress-like structure can be erected and taken down by just four people. The internal air pressure of this single-chamber air house is 1500 Pa  -  only 1 % that of a high-pressure beam but five times higher than a normal pneumatic structure. The Modern Teahouse ”wanders” between the entrance hall of the museum and a little hill in the museum garden. When it is not in use, it is packed away on a trolley.

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During the renovation of the Gotschna Tunnel from 2019 to 2020, prefabricated elements made of Compex were used for the first time as a deformable yielding zone in the invert zone. The client, construction management, construction company and supplier of the compressible elements worked closely together to implement the design specifications. Consequently, the expectations of the special building material in terms of the production quality of the prefabricated elements and handling on the construction site were more than met. The parties involved in the construction thus see potential for further applications and further developments of Compex.
Bei der Sanierung des Gotschnatunnels im Zeitraum 2019 bis 2020 wurden erstmals Fertigteile aus Compex als deformierbare Knautschzone im Sohlgewölbe eingesetzt. Bei der konkreten Umsetzung der Vorgaben aus der Planung arbeiteten Bauherr, Bauleitung, Bauunternehmen und Knautschkörperlieferant eng und vertrauensvoll zusammen. So wurden die Erwartungen an den Sonderbaustoff in Bezug auf die Qualität bei der Herstellung der Fertigteile und dem Handling auf der Baustelle mehr als erfüllt. Die am Bau Beteiligten sehen daher Potential für weitere Anwendungen und Weiterentwicklungen von Compex.

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The Parametric FEM Toolbox is a plug-in for the visual programming environment Grasshopper which implements the RF-COM API of the Dlubal RFEM finite element software to establish a connection between these two platforms. Both the transfer of data from Grasshopper into RFEM and back from RFEM into Grasshopper are supported. Thus, new possibilities are enabled beyond the options of the conventional graphical user interface (GUI) of RFEM: the use of the Rhino 3D modelling tools to create NURBS curves and surfaces; the possibility of the parametric modification of an existing FE model or part of it; the export and processing of FE model data, which sometimes is not even available through the program GUI, e.g. 3D shapes of beam elements; etc. With these functionalities, the object-oriented structure and compact GUI, this tool can easily be adapted to numerous workflows and optimization processes. This paper explores which possibilities exist for implementing a commercial FEM software in a parametric design platform. Existing approaches are reviewed, the development of the Parametric FEM Toolbox is described and some of the possible workflows with this new tool are explored through a collection of real-world case studies.

The new Peljeac Bridge and access road project, which links Mainland Croatia to the Peljeac Peninsula, is the most significant social infrastructure project in Croatia under construction at present. The bridge site lies in the highly active seismic region with ground acceleration ag = 0.34g and a maximum average ten-minute wind speed above 33.7 m/s. As a result, the execution class for the steel structure was judged to be EXC4 based on the recommended matrix in standard EN 1090-2, which defines execution classes according to consequence class, service category, and production category. The correspondingly determined quality level was class B+, which equates to quality class B under ISO 5817 with supplementary requirements for bridge decks from EN 1090-2. This article describes the whole fabrication process in the workshop, the long-distance transportation and the installation on the bridge site. To satisfy such high-quality technical requirements, the heavy steel structures were fabricated using a wide variety of mechanized equipment and automatic welding techniques. This helped to ensure a more efficient fabrication process and more consistent product quality. The length of the large side span segments was designed to suit the capabilities of the floating cranes and transit barges, thereby making on-site installation more efficient. Against the backdrop of the global Covid-19 pandemic, the contractor CRBC overcame seemingly unsurmountable obstacles beyond their control to successfully complete this challenging assignment in two years.

Nominated for Eurosteel 2021 Best Paper Award
The paper addresses the instability of large angle columns in high-strength steel subjected to compression loads. It presents a number of compression tests on such columns with different eccentricities and slenderness and the resulting different buckling failure modes observed. The experimental campaign is intended to widen our understanding of the behaviour of high-strength steel columns with large angle sections in compression and bending and so to complement previous experimental studies. The tests were accompanied by numerical analyses and calculations of the load carrying capacities based on current Eurocode 3 design recommendations. The numerical simulations were conducted using the FEM software FINELG, which takes into account the influence of geometrical and material non-linearities. The numerical and analytical results are compared with the corresponding experimental ones. The experimental campaign and the numerical simulations were conducted as part of the ANGELHY project funded by the European Commission's Research Fund for Coal and Steel (RFCS).

Nominated for the Eurosteel 2021 Best Paper Award
This short report has been prepared in the context of the Eurosteel 2021 Best Paper Award. It summarizes developments completed and in progress at the University of Liège designed to characterize the complete shear behaviour of the panel zone in steel beam-to-column joints in terms of stiffness, resistance and ductility. This work is part of a larger research project which aims to predict the complete rotational response of the joint to failure.

By using parametric modelling tools, designers can simulate a high number of design-variants with relatively low effort. Visual programming software's like Grasshopper significantly lowers the threshold for beginners to start building parametric models. This paper discusses how using Grasshopper as a parametric design tool can be applied by structural engineers to improve well-informed decision making, when designing a steel structure. Finally, worth mentioning further possibilities parametric design workflows can bring are discussed such as optimisation strategies, optimising sustainability and including structural connections in the parametric model.