The opening ceremony of the 2017 National Games of China was held in the Tianjin Olympic Center Stadium last Sunday night. During these National Games, Tianjin University (TJU) participated in the architectural design, construction monitoring and structural health monitoring of 13 venues.
The 13th National Games opening and athletics events were held in the Tianjin Olympic Center Stadium. Professor Chen Zhihua and Ding Yang, both from Tianjin University, separately participated in the Tianjin Olympic Center Stadium’s steel structure detailed design and cast steel joint experiments.
The Tianjin Olympic Center Stadium, one of Tianjin's prominent landmarks is colloquially referred to as the 'Water Drop' because the outside of the venue was designed to resemble a drop of water. The stadium has hosted games for many major sports competitions, such as the 2008 Summer Olympics, the 2012 National Games and the 2013 East Asian Games. The design concept originated from a dream of a dew drop a simple symbol of the source of life. Dew drops form on the earth, smoothly floating between heaven and earth, vitalizing the spirit of sport in the ancient Tianjin city.
'Water Drop' covers about 80,000 square meters. Its total area is 155,800 square meters. The sporting field of the stadium is approximately oval. The main structure comprises a steel roof supported by reinforced concrete frames and steel reinforced concrete structures. In order to show the dynamism and lightness of sports, the roof structure incorporates a V-shaped paralleled-chord truss cantilever structure. The steel roof truss plane is a flat and long ellipse. The long axis is about 471 meters, and the short axis is about 370 meters. It is symmetrical along the long axis. Above the playing field is an elliptical hole with a different curvature slope to the ground. Near the ground, the steel roof truss closes at the wave of an annular steel pipe truss beam and is connected to the concrete pile cap by 92 groups of steel trusses arranged circularly.
By: Wang Hang, Sun Xiaofang
Editors: Yin Shiyu and Ross Colquhoun
