On the Collapse of Ankara Sport Center in 1958

Abstract

In 1958, Ankara Sports Center, the first long span cylindrical shell structure in Turkey, collapsed two years after its scaffoldings were removed. The underlying reasons for this collapse, in spite of the juridical experts' report and designer ITU professor's statement of defense, could not be elucidated. In this study, this collapse is investigated by making use of Bayülke's paper published in TMH, Turkish Engineering News [1]. Additional concrete load to level out the manufacturing faults, imperfections due to these faults, the reported presence of strong winds during the collapse, unforeseen buckling due to creep, which were stated as probable causes by experts and the designer, are considered in this analysis. An equivalent bar system for the shell, proposed by Hrennikoff [5] is used to overcome difficulties of shell buckling and nonlinearity of the problem