THE DESIGN AND CONSTRUCTION OF A SHALLOW DOUBLE LAYERED

GEODESIC DOME - A PROJECT COMPLETED FOR THE 2003 EUROPEAN

SMALL NATIONS GAMES IN MALTA

John Valentino1, Frederick Ellul1 and Victor Lanzon2

1
Structural Engineer, Works Division, Ministry of Resources and Infrastructure, Malta
2
Project Manager, Steel Structures Ltd, Paola, Malta
john.valentino@gov.mt, abpflae@bath.ac.uk, vlanzon@steelstructures.com.mt

Abstract

The paper describes the structural conception, design, fabrication and erection of a 47 metre span spherical
dome roof structure, consisting of a shallow double-layered steel geodesic framework, covering a square
plan area at the National Sports Complex in Malta. A detailed look at the processes involved for the
successful completion of an aesthetically pleasing structure in the midst of five hundred year old imposing
historic fortifications, which also offered various structural challenges for the local construction industry, is
presented. The geometric configuration of the dome is explained, together with a review of the structural
analysis techniques employed for the design and erection stages of the structure, with particular emphasis
on the latter. The choice of using square hollow sections is amplified, together with the implications on the
main joint design. A comprehensive description of the manufacturing processes involved is undertaken,
with reference to the construction of the jigs required and the dimensional accuracy achieved. The complete
design and construction process was tailor made for the job by local designers and steelwork manufacturers.

Introduction

As part of the infrastructural works carried out in order to host the 2003 European Small
Nations Games, a sports complex was constructed, in Cottonera, which lies to the South
of Malta. The main focus of the complex, is the multipurpose sports hall, with a seating
capacity of 1500, built purposely to host international volleyball tournaments, which
however will also be used for other indoor sports events. Nestled in the midst of five
hundred year old massive fortifications and located in an area oozing history, the
designed roof structure had to play second fiddle to its urban location, whilst still being
able to comfortably perform its structural role in a pleasing and elegant manner. A
shallow spherical dome was therefore adopted as the preferred geometrical shape, which
would fulfill both roles easily.

Overall Form and Structural Concept

The roof structure consists of a shallow double-layered steel geodesic dome covering a
square plan area. Preliminary analysis indicated that due to the shallow height to span
ratio (0.05h), the use of a single layer framework would not be ideal. The dome is
supported along its perimeter on 44 vertical and 48 inclined steel columns, which are
anchored to a three dimensional braced concrete framework. The lower layer of the
dome, inscribes a square with sides measuring 46.55 metres and has a rise of 4 metres at
the apex. The dome upper layer, is concentric with the lower layer and is 1.5 metres apart.
The two layers consist of triangulated grids and are connected together by bracing
members. Each layer is produced by the subdivision of a spherical icosahedron, by a
frequency of 11 divisions, and for each layer there are 22 different member lengths, as
there are for the diagonal bracing elements in between the upper and lower layers.

Figure 1. The Cottonerra sports complex

Dome Geometry and Method of Subdivision

Usually, theoretical analyses on the economy of structures are based on the criterion of
minimum volume of material. However, this approach does not necessarily lead to the
most economic solution, as any design is greatly influenced by practical aspects, which
include the availability of materials, relevant expertise and experience of the local
construction industry, and also by ingenuity, and therefore can never be fully included in
any theoretical scenario. Furthermore, it is a well known fact that the cost of the roof
covering can often be of the same order as the cost of the steel structure itself.

In the literature, one is able to find many different methods for subdividing spherical
braced domes, which are broadly based on the overlying principle of ensuring the
minimum number of different member lengths. This then leads to a situation whereby one
is able to mass produce as many members as possible and thus ensure the minimum of
fabrication and erection costs. However, the designers felt that within the architectural
constraints imposed on the overall form of the dome, the greatest economy would only be
achieved by ensuring that an off the shelf cladding system could be used, apart from
choosing a method of subdivision which ensured the greatest degree of homogeneity in
both the length of the members and angular incidence at their nodes.

After an extensive review of the many methods, the dome geometry was based on a
modified Buckminster Fuller icosahedron dome, wherein the great advantage is that all
the ribs follow great circles and the number of different member lengths equals 2n, where
n is the frequency of subdivision, and the number of different member lengths of the
diagonal members parallel to the main ribs equals n. The number of subdivisions, is then
the crucial variable, which would directly affect the economy of the structure as a whole,
due to its influence on member lengths and fabrication costs. A quantitative parametric
analysis yielded 11 supports at 4.25 metre spacing as the optimum solution given the
available constraints.

Members Used and Joint Design

The roof structural framework consists of a top and bottom layer of 100 mm square
hollow sections, connected by 60.3mm diameter circular hollow section lacing members,
to form a triangulated grid of trusses in between nodes. The nodes are connected by
114.3 mm circular hollow section vertical members. The vertical and inclined supporting
columns are 193.7 mm circular hollow sections. There are a total of six different vertical
column member lengths and six inclined column member lengths. The vertical columns
and inclined members are fixed to the underlying reinforced concrete structure with
holding down bolts. All the members and plates are of Grade 50 steel. The choice of
using SHS members instead of the more traditional and widely used CHS members lies in
the superior aesthetic effects achievable by using the former, especially at the joint itself,
whereby the parallel faces of the node plates would meet snugly with those from the
members. Arguably a more elegant structure ensues when using SHS members, as it was
always the aim of the designers to depart from the more industrial effect of a purely CHS
framework.

Therefore, a most important component of the roof structure, the joint, had to be designed
from scratch, as the designers felt that no known proprietary connection would fulfil all
the desired roles. A tailor-made connection was therefore designed, which ensured
adequate structural capacity together with the required aesthetic qualities. The node also
had to ensure sufficient working clearance to perform sound welding and also enough
working clearance to facilitate bolting on site. Moreover the architectural design intent to
minimize the size of the connection had to be respected. The resulting connection
consists of two pairs of circa 440mm diameter octagonal shaped steel plates, with 12
holes each and pressed to an inclined shape, welded to the radial vertical member which
is a CHS section. The SHS members have fish plates welded to their ends and are then
bolted between the pair of plates using 4 Grade 10.9 bolts. In all there are twenty two
variations of bolt hole layouts, depending on the distribution of the interconnecting
members.

The square plan area roofed over is of circa 2170m2, and the corresponding structural
steel roof self-weight is of 48 kg/m2. A total of 73 tons of SHS tubes were used together
with 33 tons of CHS pipes, the supporting columns weighing another 15 tons. In all
around 20,000 bolts were used and over 15km of welding was required, whilst 2190m2 of
roof sheeting was employed. All the elements were eventually hot dipped galvanized. The
architectural paint system applied was of a zinc phosphate modified alkyd undercoat and
two coats of high build alkyd finishing coat, whilst an epoxy based paint system was used
for all the surfaces exposed to the elements to provide an added layer of protection.

Figure 2. The shallow dome partially clad

Cladding System
The double curvature of the dome leads to many problems in various cladding materials
and their fixing needs ingenuity. There is a very close relation between the layout of the
structure and the type of cladding that can be used, with restrictions on the maximum
spans and the spacing of the support members. However due to the slight double
curvature, corrugated steel sheets were used for the roof covering, thus eliminating the
need for expensive proprietary roof sheeting. Where a slope on the surface of more than 5
degrees was present, normal sheet overlaps were used to ensure weather tightness. For
the central area of the dome and the regions were the four roof quadrants intersect, a
special flashing arrangement was required to maintain weather tightness, but a cladding
system which is used for flat roofs proved more than adequate.

The roof cladding consisted of a built up system having a trapezoidal profiled upper steel
sheet of thickness 0.70mm and a slightly profiled lower steel sheet/liner of 0.5mm
thickness beneath this. In between both sheets, their is enclosed a layer of mineral wool
insulation of a thickness of about 100mm, with vapour barrier and breather paper. All
sheets were 1 metre wide and up to 6 metres in length, cut to size on site. The cladding is
arranged to span directly between the intermediate members of the geodesic dome and
thus no purlin members were required. The side cladding to the dome was constructed
using prefabricated sandwich panels of similar construction, with both faces micro ribbed.

Structural Design
Structural design was carried out to UK Codes of Practice, with lateral forces derived
from a wide literature survey of existing codes. The understanding of the flow of the
wind around such a structure, would have lead to an accurate prediction of wind
pressures and forces. However, no wind tunnel tests were performed and therefore
reliance had to be made on existing guidelines in codes of practice and a corresponding
literature survey. The value to be adopted for the basic design wind speed has not been
established for local construction and therefore meteorological data was studied and a
design wind speed was calculated using reliability analysis.

Loading

Unfortunately a detailed comparison of available codes concerning wind loading,

revealed significant differences between practices adopted by various countries.
Furthermore the majority of codes, only provide data relating to the most common types
of building and do not provide for unusual or difficult structures such as domes.
Additionally wherever reference was made to arched roofs and or domes the information
provided is only general and features such as the roughness of the cladding used were not
encountered. Nonetheless the pressure coefficients derived were seen to be similar in
magnitude and distribution.

The basic wind speed was calculated at 35ms-1 (78 miles per hour) and is commensurate
with a hurricane of force 12, where the former is defined as the 3 second gust speed
estimated to be exceeded on the average once in 50 years. This wind speed was assumed
to blow from any horizontal direction at any one time and no special consideration was
assumed in order to account for site local effects. Thus the basic design wind pressure
was of the order of 750 N/m2. As the building is symmetrical, only two separate cases
were considered for wind loading. Wind blowing at an angle of 0/90 degrees and wind
also at 45 degrees. For the given geometry, it was assumed suction would occur on all the
dome surfaces, except in a few localised places.

As regards temperature effects, a temperature change of ± 25 degrees was considered as

appropriate from climate data supplied by the meteorological office. A further
consideration was made regarding the fact that the exposed exterior surfaces of the
structure would experience greater thermal changes than the enclosed interior elements.
Thus various combinations of temperature loadings were also derived.

Finally the total dead load considered was of 0.22 kN/m2, the service load from the light
fixtures was taken as 100kg at a few node locations, whilst the live load was stipulated at
0.75kN/m2, together with a possible hail/ice load of 0.6 kN/m2. Various combinations of
all the load cases were considered, which included full and patterned live loading over
the dome. This resulted in over 60 load combinations, as preliminary analysis eliminated
other live loading patterns.

Analysis

The structure was analysed using an in house software program, WASP, developed
specifically to cater for the various erection stages. The main load combinations were
also checked against proprietary commercial software. The model was a 3-dimensional
one, and included both the lattice dome and the underlying reinforced concrete frame
structure. Following a linear elastic analysis which determined the member sizing, an
overall linear buckling elastic analysis was performed, followed by a geometrically
nonlinear analysis and a dynamic analysis to establish the first six modes of the structure.

The buckling load factor obtained for the maximum vertical load combination was 4.8
and buckling occurred in a localized area or dimple. A second order analysis was also
carried out to verify that the deviations in forces and deflections were insignificant.
Finally the joint design was checked using detailed three dimensional models and finite
element analysis, for both the elastic and post elastic stages. In order to corroborate the
numerical analysis physical testing on particular joint assemblies was also undertaken.

Figure 3. The 3-dimensional computer model

Erection Stresses
The consideration of the effect of the erection stages on the final analysis of the structure
is important, with differences between the behaviour of the non-linear elastic model
where stage loading was considered and the elastic model where no stage loading was
considered, being significant. In the former the deflections are about two times greater in
magnitude. Moreover, the maximum compressive forces for selfweight, are +64% and
+19% greater in the top and bottom chord respectively and the maximum tensile forces
are +38% and +44% greater in the top and bottom chord respectively. The maximum
compressive force for the worst design load combinations is 22% larger for the top chord
and 6% larger for the bottom chord.

This increase in stresses in the non-linear elastic model is attributed to a redistribution of

stresses from the centre of the dome to the four quadrants. In the elastic analysis the
behaviour is similar to a shallow dome with the line of thrust passing very close to the
springing and rising above the mid-depth of the arch towards the centre. In the non-linear
elastic analysis the behaviour approaches that of a plate with some lifting at the corner. If
no non-linear analysis is carried out the designer must be aware that the top chord attracts
more load.
Fabrication

The tender drawings detailed the complete dome design and therefore the steelwork
fabricator had to comply with all the details. Nonetheless, minor changes were accepted
in the form of standardization to bolt hole locations and dimensional accuracy. All the
steel was imported and fabrication commenced immediately on arrival. In order to speed
up the process whereby any manufactured elements could be erected on site, the
fabrication programme was worked out to take advantage of the existing civil works on
site.

The first stage in the manufacturing process was the cutting and preparation of the
individual steel plates to form the various stiffeners, gusset plates and fish plates. The
bolt holes were subsequently drilled and all sharp corners bevelled. The first elements to
be fabricated were the nodes in the areas to be erected first. These would then form part
of the actual jig which would allow the fabrication of the joining members, thus ensuring
the correct length to all these identical members. Two separate jigs were mounted, one for
the 3 metre span main trusses and the other for the 4 metre span intermediate trusses.

All octagonal plates where pressed with the same angle on each face of the octagon in
order to avoid any possibility of initial cracking. Pressing was formed after drilling of
holes. The nodes were fabricated to a maximum tolerance of ± 2mm in their length,
whilst a tolerance of 0.5 mm either way was kept for the centre line of the holes in the
nodes. End plates where then attached to the octagonal node plates by means of dowels,
which were then tack welded to the individual truss members. The trusses were then
fabricated in between these nodes to the same tolerances as the nodes. Great care was
attributed to respect the centre lines of the nodes which coincide with the centrelines of
all the members. Every truss was then marked on the jig and after tack welding was
complete the truss was removed for production.

Erection Procedure

The construction of the holding down bolt assemblies with eventual concrete casting took
two months to complete and was the first stage in the actual dome erection sequence.
After fabricating the individual members in the workshop according to their respective
jigs every member was galvanized and delivered to site in their loose condition. The
central sports hall area itself served as an assembly area for the modules where the
assembly jig was constructed which comprised the stub columns on levelling girders. The
assembled modules were then painted and hoisted into place.

The dome was built by the perimeter-in method, where construction starts at the supports
and continues inwards towards the centre. In this way no scaffolding or propping was
required but only a mobile crane to lift the pieces into position. Parts of the dome, up to a
maximum weight of 12 tons were assembled at ground level and secured in place.
Different stages of construction are illustrated in Figure 4. The complete dome was
erected in four months. The cladding fixing was undertaken as soon as all the dome had
been erected, in order to allow the structure to take its final deflected shape. The side
cladding to the dome was thus fixed first, and was followed by each of the four quadrants
of the top cladding. Finally all flashings and sealer were measured and fixed.

Figure 4. The erection sequence

Conclusions

Notwithstanding the modern trend in standardization and mass production, especially in

the field of space structures, where off the shelf solutions are common place, this
particular project evidences an instance where a tailor made solution was conceived and
followed right through completion, adopting a “back to basics” design approach. Such a
concept necessitated a holistic outlook, with constant feedback between the structural
engineers and steelwork fabricators. Thus an interesting structure in a unique location,
and incorporating new ideas was completed on time and within budget.

Acknowledgements
Project Coordinator : R. Farrugia, Works Division, Ministry of Resources and Infrastructure, Malta
Project Architect : E. Buttigieg, Works Division, Ministry of Resources and Infrastructure, Malta
Steelwork Contractor : Steel Structures Limited, Paola, Malta

References

Makowski, Z.S, (1984), Analysis, Design and Construction of Braced Domes, Granada, London, UK.
Parker, J.A. and Henderson, J.E. (1997), Hollow Structural Section Connections and Trusses A Design
Guide, CISC.

Trahair, N.S. and Bradford, M.A. (1994), The Behaviour and Design of Steel Structures (2nd edition), E &
FN Spon.

Trahair, N.S. (1993), Flexural Torsional Buckling of Structures, E & FN Spon.

Valentino, J. (2002), WASP. A computer program for non-linear elastic analysis of three dimensional space
structures during erection intervals, Works Division, Malta.