FEATURE

Gatwick Passenger Bridge

Martin Knight, Wilkinson Eyre Architects, Associate Director and Stephanos Samaras, Arup, Associate Director.

Extensions to Gatwick Airport's terminals have necessitated the construction of a bridge to

carry passengers over an aircraft taxiway which is in constant use. The 2,000 tonne bridge
is being constructed near the airport boundary and will be moved into position later.

Pre-assembly of the primary steel structure is now complete.

ARCHITECTURAL BRIEF
Modern international airports are vast, busy
building environments where the dislocation
caused by post 9/11 security requirements, as well
as retail and leisure facilities, means the drama of
travel by air is frequently lost in anonymous
functionality. At Gatwick Airport, the requirement
to develop an island site to improve passenger
facilities provided an unusual opportunity to
improve the passengers experience and revive
this sense of drama. Therefore, in addition to
providing a simple, functional connection between
the North Terminal and the new Pier 6 satellite
building, the architectural design of the bridge
seeks to exploit the unique and dramatic
opportunity to view the airfield close-up from
above. The bridge will be the first outside of the
United States to span a taxiway and will be a
major landmark for Gatwick and for client, BAA.
The 198m-long fully-enclosed bridge is designed
to provide permanent pedestrian and buggy
access across Taxiway L, one of the busiest airside
routes with frequent aircraft and service vehicle
movements. The main span of 125m is dictated by
current clearance and sightline standards, together
with safeguards for future widening of the taxiway
to 95m, and the minimum vertical clearance
across the taxiway is 22m. The alignment is along
the route of a major airfield road, which the

support piers straddle, and is terminated at each

end in cores containing escalators, lifts, escape
stairs and service risers. Other airfield operational
constraints included a desired overall height
limitation of 34m above apron level and minimum
visual obstruction, resulting in the development of
a form of framed arch truss.

MAIN STRUCTURE
The main structural spine is contained entirely
within the building envelope to minimise long
term maintenance and comprises two parallel
longitudinal steel tubular members forming the
top chord of the bridge and a triangular steel
plated fabricated section forming the bottom
chord. The curved profile CHS members are rollformed and joined by inclined tubular framing
members above the continuous central CHS node,
allowing the varying arch geometry to be easily
accommodated and cross views to be maintained,
as well as providing a longitudinal services duct at
high level. Locating the primary structure along
the centreline means the heavy passenger
conveyor structures are nearer to the centre of
gravity. It also has the added advantage of
providing a natural line of security between
departing and arriving passengers and
maximising views out.

Typical cross section towards mid-span (Arup)

Elevation of main structural spine with a Boeing 747-400 (Arup)

The main bridge support piers are A in cross

section to provide most of the lateral stability of
the structure and are Y in elevation to reduce the
effective main span. Each leg member is a tapered
rectangular box beam, with plate thicknesses
chosen to avoid the need for internal stiffening.
The raking upper legs are fixed to the deck
structure to provide vertical, transverse and
longitudinal restraint and the legs will flex in the

longitudinal direction to accommodate movement

due to thermal expansion. The lower steel box
sections will be filled with concrete at low level to
increase their robustness in case of impact from
aircraft or tugs.
Plate and circular hollow section thicknesses
were chosen to minimise the material specification
and ordering variations and the amount of
stiffening required. The steel thicknesses vary
from 6.3mm to more than 50mm and the overall
width of the primary structure varies from 2.0m at
the bottom of the triangular spine box to 3.0m at
the top booms of the spine truss. These widths
remain constant along the length of the bridge.

CLADDING
The glazed sides of the bridge are inclined 11
outwards, reducing maintenance requirements
and the effects of reflection, glare and solar gain.
An innovative cladding solution was developed
with the supplier that employs standard unitised
components, which are common to other
Continued over...
BAA projects.
Steel Truss node detail.

Internal view along bridge.

FACT FILE
Client
Architect
Engineer
Steelwork Contractor

BAA Gatwick Ltd

Wilkinson Eyre Architects
Arup
Watson Steel Structures Ltd

This means the geometrical variation caused by

the arching top chord is accommodated with a
nominal facet between cladding units, allowing
the bridge deck to waist in plan towards its centre
from a maximum width of 12.7m at each end to a
minimum width of 11.5m above the taxiway, while
maintaining a constant roof width of 14.6m.
Internally, the ceiling line follows the arch profile,
resulting in a 6m-high gallery space at mid-span.

STRUCTURAL BEHAVIOUR
During the assembly and erection stages the deck
has a 128m long simply-supported span with 25m
cantilever backspans. In its permanent state the
bridge is a three span continuous beam with the
fixed base legs forming a 128m long portal frame
and with sliding bearings at the ends of the 35m
long backspans. This change in structural system
during the life of the bridge required the careful
selection of vertical precambers and final profiles
during the pre-assembly phase to meet
operational and architectural requirements.

SECONDARY STRUCTURE
The secondary structure which supports the floor,
passenger conveyor equipment, roof, glazed
facades and soffit follows a 6.1m grid along the
spine in the form of ribs at floor and roof levels.
These cantilevers, effectively continuous through
the spine for the full deck width, are integrated
with the glazing mullions which structurally
connect the tips of the roof and floor cantilevers
on grid to control the overall torsional behaviour
of the deck.
Fabricated tapered steel beams made with 10mm
webs and 20mm flanges generally form the profile
of the bridge soffit and provide support to the
lightweight concrete floor. Universal column
sections form the roof ribs, which are offset above
the main truss booms with selected purlins being
part of the roof wind truss. The passenger
conveyors located in each side of the bridge
significantly reduce permissible deflections. The
design conditions also include and allow for crowd
induced vibration following new knowledge from
the London Millennium Footbridge.

ANALYSIS
The complete deck structure was analysed in a
three-dimensional element space frame using
Oasys GSA, which performed static dynamic and
buckling analysis, including the effects of seven
stages of the construction sequence. The
intersections in the leg box girders were modelled
in GSA using separate local shell element models,
with forces extracted from the main deck model
applied to the local models.

The sinuous form is generated by the varying height of the spine truss

Oasys GSAs powerful combination and

enveloping features were used to manipulate the
79 basic loadcases, covering dead, live, wind,
thermal and impact effects to provide graphical
and condensed numerical output to use in
member sizing, so that every combination of these
loads required by BS 5400 was covered by
the design.

PROCUREMENT, ASSEMBLY AND

INSTALLATION
The method of procurement and erection had to
be innovative in order to minimise disruption to
the airport operations and the use of large scale
pre-assembly at landside was designed in from
the outset together with the steelwork contractor.
Watson Steel Structures Ltd and its specialist
heavy transport and lifting contractors were fully
engaged in the design process. The BAA
partnering ethos produced an optimal design for
fabrication and pre-assembly which made
maximum use of factory prefabrication and off site
pre-assembly.
The installation method, comprising perhaps the
largest pre-assembly in an airport, includes the
construction of the full 198m-long steel structure
in a landside area by the airport boundary. The
two end sections will then be removed leaving a
170m-long bridge section. This main assembly will
then be clad, glazed and fitted with all mechanical
and electrical services and a trial lift undertaken
before entering airside. The lifting towers and gear
together with the bridge section, approximately
2000 tonnes in total, will then be self-propelled to
the final position. Once in position the main
section will be raised to allow the bridge supports
to be positioned underneath before being lowered
and fixed. The end sections including escalators
will then be added using smaller lifting equipment.