Engineering

Sabiha Gökçen International Airport

Invincible airport

Engineering 2 of 8

Sabiha Gökçen International Airport Courtesy Arup

Turkey’s 1999 Kocaeli earthquake killed 17,000 people, thousands of them simply because they were in seismically unsound buildings. This year, the design firm Arup built Istanbul’s airport—the emergency gateway in any future quake—to withstand an 8.0-magnitude earthquake (the Kocaeli was a 7.4). The building’s resilience comes from 300 rubber-and-steel springs called seismic isolators, typically 12 to 60 inches long, that allow for horizontal movement in the layer between ground and building. Each isolator’s two curved plates, with a bearing in the middle, allows the structure to shift during an earthquake without cracking. The number of isolators, as well as the amount of testing—14 different earthquake scenarios tested the building in hundredth-of-a-second intervals—is unprecedented. Finished in an astonishing 18 months, the airport is the largest earthquake-ready structure in the world.

4 Comments

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fritz91

11/18/10 at 11:38 pm

You guys really don't do a lot of research for these projects. Or maybe there just aren't many contenders. Seismic damping is not new. And would you bet your life on an engineer's product that failed as miserably as the millennium bridge? I may sound like a cynic, but mass media seems geared towards trying to amaze people rather than provide real human accomplishments.

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blackbird7

11/20/10 at 1:39 pm

Right fritz91, because building a huge structure that could save lives is a totally worthless thing to do. If there's an earthquake, why don't you go stand in a parking garage and see if you change your mind. Bravo to the guys who built this awesome airport by the way!

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ddamian47

11/22/10 at 1:59 pm

fritz91, you're an idiot. This article isn't about the seismic damping. This article is about making the largest earthquake-ready structure in the world. Did you care not to read that part, or are you just stupid? Only a fool would think this not an accomplishment.

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Pippin

11/22/10 at 8:22 pm

18 months, holy crap. I used to live there, and I've seen a regular old apartment building take five years to build. Good for them.