Designed with Dlubal Software

Crossrail Station in Canary

Wharf London
A unique wooden structure is located
in the heart of London since the end
of March 2014. In a period of just six
months, the Austrian company
WIEHAG built the roof with a total
length of 300 m for the Crossrail rail-
way station situated in the business
district Canary Wharf. Crossrail is a rail-
way and infrastructure construction
project in Greater London which is to
be completed by 2018. The cost for
the entire project with its route net-
work, which is about 100 km long, is
estimated at approximately 18 billion
euros.
WIEHAG was not only responsible for Crossrail Station Canary Wharf during construction stage (photo: WIEHAG)
the construction work but also for the
planning and structural analysis of the The roof covering consists of mem- Design architect
timber grid roof. The structural calcu- brane cushions. In the central area, Foster & Partners, London
lation of the beam structure including however, the roof is open to facilitate www.fosterandpartners.com
altogether 1,414 beams consisting of the natural watering of a park created
glued laminated timber as well as 111 Executive architect
inside.
steel pipes was performed in RSTAB. Adamson Associates, London
The Crossrail station in Canary Wharf is www.adamson-associates.com
one of the largest timber construction
Structural engineer - overall project
Structure projects in Great Britain, representing
+ test engineer - roof structure
In its cross-section, the roof structure another architectural highlight for the
Arup, London; www.arup.com
of the station building can be de- city of London.
Planning, structural analysis and
scribed as a semi-ellipse. The arc spans construction for roof structure
freely over a width of about 31 m. The following companies participated WIEHAG GmbH, Altheim, Austria
Coupled triangles form the mesh in the construction: www.wiehag.com
structure of the load-bearing shell. Building owner
With a regular grid of 6.0 m, the timber Software
Canary Wharf Contractors (Crossrail) Dlubal Software GmbH, Tiefenbach,
structure is supported at the nodal Ltd., London; www.canarywharf.com
points. Germany; www.dlubal.com

At both ends of the longitudinal sides,

the roof cantilevers spectacularly 30 m
over the water surface. There, round
steel pipes running parallel to the
diagonal timber beams form the end
of the roof. These so-called end ring
beams are double curved and have an
architectural function in addition to
strengthening the structure.
A major engineering challenge was
the design of the nodal points consist-
ing of steel. They were represented
and calculated as finite element mod-
els in RFEM. The structural steel parts
had to be made with a high degree of
accuracy in order to keep the toler-
ance compensation as low as possible
at the construction site.
RSTAB model of Crossrail Station Canary Wharf (screen shot: Dlubal)

Software for Structural and Dynamic Analysis