The Shanghai Sports Centre features an 80,000-seat stadium for track-and-field events, soccer matches, and cultural and sports extravaganzas. The 61,700-square-meter building incorporates a 3-star 280-room hotel, an underground recreational athletics center, and parking for 1,600 cars. It is notable for being China's first long span fabric roof and the world's longest cantilevered steel truss roof. The project was a successful joint effort of Chinese and American engineers and contractors.
The structure consists of a continuous series of umbrellas held up by flying masts. The roof rises and dips as it makes its circuit around the field, following the elevation of the back of the stands. Large steel trusses match their extent as the roof cantilevers as much as 73 meters over them. The stands are covered with a 28,900-square-meter membrane of Teflon-coated Fiberglas, formed of trapezoidal panels inserted into the bays between the trusses. The complete cable-supported flying mast structure and the fabric covering were erected in less than three months, cutting the estimated schedule by 30 percent. The fabric is stretched between the 300-meter perimeter and the oval opening at the center. Each flying mast unit consists of four upper ridge cables, four bottom suspension cables and a flying vertical compression post. All cantilevered trusses are tilted slightly upward from their back supports, while flying posts are kept vertical and post heights are varied at each flying mast location. Governed by the original arrangement of the cantilevered steel truss roof, the flying mast layout consists of 32 bays with 17 different types of fabric panel, with from one to three masts per bay depending on the cantilever lengths. Each bay formed by two adjacent trusses is trapezoidal. Perimeter steel pipe framing has been introduced above the top chord of the trusses at each bay; it is connected with short posts to the top chord at the node joints. The raised pipe framing acts as a boundary-supporting structure for the roof. The panels, ridge cables and suspension cables are all anchored to it. The framing also provides a gutter for drainage in the radial direction of the roof and transfers roof loads to the supporting roof trusses.
Technical Data
Materials:
membrane PTFE-coated glass-fiber fabric
Dimensions:
site area 190 000 m2
building area 100 000 m2
total floor area 170 000 m2
membrane covered area 28 900 m2
height 62.5 m
seats 80 000
