Hard Rock Hotel under construction in New Orleans collapses... 119

[PEinVA]

https://www.nola.com/news/article_6eee9788-ed27-11e9-b03c-0f3cede083bb.html

Apparently risk of additional failure....I hope not. Ugh.

Those top floors....what is going on with that framing....



RC

 

[msquared48]

Looks like the rock was not hard enough.

Mike McCann, PE, SE (WA, HI)

 

[bones206]

Officials said it appeared the collapse initially affected the sixth to eighth floors before damage spread throughout a large portion of the building

 

[IRstuff]

Apparently risk of additional failure

That's not particularly surprising; the loading on the building is completely messed up and there are missing and damaged beams on the portion that survived.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!

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[Tomfh]

In the video it looks as though the edge beams and column grids stayed largely intact, and fell outwards as a frame, with the decks all slipping/breaking off.

 

[Ingenuity]

Officials said it appeared the collapse initially affected the sixth to eighth floors before damage spread throughout a large portion of the building

The hotel was (to be) 17 or 18 floors - the first 5 or 6 were parking (PT floor framing), then a PT podium deck supporting 10+ (?) floors of hotel and condo framed in steel + metal deck. Presumably when they state "...affected the sixth to eight floors..." they are referring to the upper hotel floor framing - measured above the podium deck.

 

[Reno1986]

Nice video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZP4tbb8omHc

To add up on the note of
structuralengr89
These cantilevers are having a shoring above which seems not loaded on the beams below this might be the case of it might be shifted during the collapse

Also, it is noted that the steel columns in the upper typical floors are shifted from the columns below. This discontinuity could accelerate a progressive collapse.

Lack of shoring is a factor in these systems where the deck is designed to be the form work. The structure seems to be very optimized with light sections at the typical floors that noway it could handled an additional weight on the horizontal or the vertical element (ideally it would not be required to)


If the design is concluded to be done properly a probable cause is the localized failure of floor bay had a domino effect on the others above and below and that one or two bays caused it all.

The podium slab indeed performed well!

You never can tell by pictures and videos, much more need to be reviewed.

 

[Reno1986]

This too loaded at the roof with such a small distance apart not sure how the filled steel deck with the long spans handle these weights

 

[JohnRBaker]

To say nothing of the tubs of debris.

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without

 

[Tomfh]

Some pallets of blocks and some garbage bins should not be causing such a large scale progressive collapse.

 

[jittles]

Check out the steel framing and deck orientation in the cantilever...where those small canti tubes supposed to hold the floor up? The shoring appears to fail, but this appears to be some weird, inadequate framing

I'd have to assume we're seeing incomplete structure here, shoring being a big clue of course. I mean, there is no good load path for those stub cantilever tubes - no back-span, only a small beam in torsion to resist the moment. There must have been some more steel that would eventually be installed to support the ends of the tube steel members...

 

[TheGreenLama]

Here's a cropped and zoomed image from a NOLA article in July. Note the curved facade and location of construction elevator that was last to fall.

https://www.nola.com/news/business/article_584bf19a-a265-11e9-b437-53bf3442a4cb.html

 

[bones206]

I won’t comment on this as it would be inappropriate to be connecting dots at this stage, but I wanted to share another news item I came across: Link

 

[bones206]

Some construction progress videos: Link

 

[MJB315]

Do I see that overhang detail correctly? A W-flanged girder with periodic tube sections cantilevering out 6-10 feet without backspans to support a slab on metal deck?

If so, it would seem like a pretty flexible system. Did all the load just keeping going down the most-stiff path (temporary shores) until one finally buckled and set off the dominoes? It probably wouldn't take much for the bottom flange of the W-shaped girder to get "pushed in" when the cantilevers suddenly tried to engage and take the load.



"We shape our buildings, thereafter they shape us." -WSC

 

[bones206]

Looking at the contractor's website and the structural engineering firm's website, neither seems to have a project anywhere near this height or scale in their portfolios.

 

[JohnRBaker]

Some construction progress videos:

First off, let me say that this is what it looks like living in an era of drones.

Second, I can't believe that this company, Citadel Builders, have kept these Hard Rock videos up on their website. I would think that their corporate lawyers, to say nothing of their PR staff, would have immoderately ordered them taken down.

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without

 

[JAE]

Some generic info displayed on Citadel's website - their plan room access to the drawings isn't active.

 

[JLNJ]

Is it typical to offer financial incentives for early completion on a project such as this one?

 

[Rabbit12]

The structural engineer has a team of 2 engineers, an EIT, and 5 designers. Seems like a project the size of this would warrant a larger team of engineers. If the designers are truly designers and not just CAD people I could see that helping but a 17 story structure would keep an engineer and EIT busy for a significant amount of time.

For the record, this may have nothing to do with the design and might be a construction error. I just found it odd that such a large project had a structural engineer with such a small bench.