Base-Isolated Intermodal Transportation Center Serves Dual Purpose as Emergency Response Nerve Center

Abstract eng:
This paper presents the structural design and analysis of the unique 300,000 square foot base-isolated Regional Intermodal Transportation Center (RITC) located in Burbank, California. The structure houses the new rental car facility for the Bob Hope Airport, a bus transit facility and airport visitor parking, however, this facility is anything but a typical parking structure. The structure is designed to act as the hub of the federal and local Emergency Response Center following a major regional earthquake. As such, it has been designed to meet extraordinarily high seismic performance goals set by the airport authority. The base isolated structure has been designed to not only withstand the largest conceivable earthquake in the region, but to remain fully operational as a crucial part of the Emergency Response Center. The project was originally designed by others as a traditional design-bid-build project using all steel frame construction, however, the airport authority provided the bidding contractors with the option to re-design the structure only (all functional, architectural and seismic performance requirements would remain unchanged). As the design-build structural engineers, the authors provided a creative and innovative approach to meet the project criteria with a completely different structural design that saved millions in construction cost while providing a more serviceable concrete structure. The facility was designed using a post-tensioned concrete superstructure with a concrete special moment resisting frames supported on eighty two (82) triple friction pendulum bearing isolators located just below the second floor (10 feet above grade). A long span steel roof structure was designed to support a 1.5 mega-watt solar array. The project was extremely fast-tracked with the entire design and peer review process, including nonlinear response history analysis, completed in just 4 months.

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