Computer-controlled cutting machines from Aeronaut Elektron (Terrey Hills, New South Wales, Australia) minimized waste in kitting the fabrics and foam, and the fabrics were wet-out using impregnation machines designed and built in-house. PCT selected Gurit’s Ampreg 21FR epoxy with Ultra Slow hardener for the wet lamination resin, which offered structural performance, durability and compatibility with the epoxy adhesives used for secondary bonding of structures. The latter confirmed a stiffness-driven design, which pointed to sandwich construction final materials selection also was influenced by the need to meet British Fire Standard BST476-7 Class I surface flame-spread requirements while maintaining sufficient laminate stiffness and strength in a structure compromised by thousands of LED ports. Here, PCT enlisted the aid of materials supplier Gurit UK (Newport, Isle of Wight, U.K.) not only to develop composite laminate plans, but also to perform finite element analysis (FEA). To minimize weight, the team designed a steel spaceframe clad with composite panels strong enough to resist wind speeds of 53.8 m/sec (131 mph/211 kmh).
“Composites offered a very light, yet strong construction as well as a fast and economical fabrication process.” “This is where composites came into play,” Waimer explains. Compounding the difficulty, the hotel was already under construction when Saudi King Abdul Aziz decided that its main tower should be crowned with a clock - the original 76-story structure was not designed to support the 200m/656-ft tall addition. Further, the clock would be crowned with a 22m/72-ft diameter, 160m/525-ft tall, crescent-topped finial (see drawing, at right), which would house a Lunar Observation Center. Because it is rectangular - the east and west faces are slightly more narrow (38m/125-ft wide by 43m/141-ft tall) than the north and south faces (43m/141 ft square) - PCT would have to fabricate two different pairs of clock faces, each assembled from hundreds of differently shaped panels, which would be drilled to accommodate a total of 700,000 light-emitting diodes (LEDs) for night-time illumination. Paired on many projects, beginning with the sliding domes in 1988, PCT and SL-Rausch nevertheless faced some unusually large challenges in this massive tower. PCT’s managing director, Hannes Waimer, credits the failure-free performance of these structures, in part, to detailed design and testing performed by the SL-Rasch/PCT team. CompositesWorld, Plataine launch composites technology survey
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