Congratulations to the winners of the Tekla UK Model Competition 2009! This year's competition sported some excellent entries and the voting was as close as ever. The awards allow us to celebrate both the versatility of Tekla Structures and express appreciation toward our customers work. Tekla Structures plays a great role in creating many of the complex structures seen and admired every day around the United Kingdom and indeed the world.
This year
Bourne Engineering took the award for the under 150 tonne category with their model entry for The Castle House wind turbines, which are a part of the scheme also known as Strata. A 43-storey residential tower being built by developers Brookfield Construction in London, Castle House will stand 147 metres tall and provide a total of 310 new apartments.
“This was a popular entry in the under 150 tonne category and is actually far more complex than the initial impression with hundreds of unique brackets in the model to support the external cladding system. Once again it is a great example of the diversity of the models we now see created in Tekla Structures and the expertise within our customer base. At a time when more of the construction industry is moving more towards building information modelling it means our customers are ideally placed to offer their unique services and skills to enhance and affect projects much earlier in the design phase”
Andrew Bellerby, managing Director at Tekla (UK) Ltd.
The design is made distinctive by the three wind turbines at the top of it which when combined with the sloping upper floors help give the scheme the look of a certain shaving product, hence the nickname - the Electric Razor. It was these turbines modelled by Bourne Engineering that grabbed our judges attention.
Bourne modelled the 20 metre tall wind farm in the form of three turbines each 9 metres in diameter. The model shows the enclosures that contain the turbines to form the housing around the plane of the blades, improving overall efficiency whilst avoiding wind noise or vibration.
"The steel element of this project is the top section which houses three 9 meter diameter wind turbines within an elliptical frame design. The enclosures for the three turbines consist of 24 individual elliptical CHS sections and 6 curved CHS sections. Between these CHS components, beams connected to fin plates form a rib cage for the cladding.
The steel structure is modelled in Tekla Structures to complement the shape of the top of the building and to form a complete frame to support the cladding in line with the main building. It has three circular openings. These are parallel to each other, however with the building having curved and sloping faces this causes the face of the openings to be elliptical in differing planes to each other."
Andrew Newman, Draughtsman at Bourne Engineering.
"This project was trial erected on a temporary site at ground level to ensure accurate fit and to allow the frame to be reviewed by following trades to gain a clear understanding of the structure before being dismantled and erected at its roof top location."
Blair Thomas, Drawing Office Technical Manager at Bourne Engineering.
Read about the Arup winning model
Read about the Creagh winning model
*Artists impression, copyright of Hamiltons Architects Ltd.