Hefei Lakeside Exhibition Center
With about five million inhabitants and a booming economy, Hefei is one of the top up-and-coming addresses for Chinese industry. Flanked by the Yangtze and Huai rivers as well as Chao Lake, this city, the capital of Anhui province, has attracted companies from, for example, the automotive, steel, chemicals and textiles sectors plus their suppliers.
The economic significance of Hefei is now being underscored by a new trade fair centre: exhibition halls, a conference centre and hotels covering an area of more than 300 000 m². Six trade fair halls, an entrance building, a main exhibition pavilion and a gallery are being built in the first phase. The gallery, 162 m long and 30.6 m wide, links the entrance building with the pavilion. Open at the side, this structure with its PTFE membrane roof consists of a steel framework reinforced with steel cables. The corrugated, translucent roof allows plenty of daylight to enter the gallery but at the same time provides shade from the sun and shelter from the rain.
For the roof covering, seele covertex supplied and erected 14 PTFE membrane segments each approx. 500 m² in area. Each one is supported on two steel masts forming high points and at the sides is guyed back to booms attached to the structural steelwork. Owing to the size of the individual membrane segments, which are 30.6 m long and between 13 and 18 m wide, the erection work turned out to be very challenging. Furthermore, as the 14 segments are connected together in the transverse direction, it was vital to achieve a constant alignment over the entire length of the structure. Nevertheless, compared with a traditional form of construction, the combination of steel structure and membrane roof made it easier to keep to the tight timetable: the gallery was completed in May 2011 after a construction period of just five months.
The economic significance of Hefei is now being underscored by a new trade fair centre: exhibition halls, a conference centre and hotels covering an area of more than 300 000 m². Six trade fair halls, an entrance building, a main exhibition pavilion and a gallery are being built in the first phase. The gallery, 162 m long and 30.6 m wide, links the entrance building with the pavilion. Open at the side, this structure with its PTFE membrane roof consists of a steel framework reinforced with steel cables. The corrugated, translucent roof allows plenty of daylight to enter the gallery but at the same time provides shade from the sun and shelter from the rain.
For the roof covering, seele covertex supplied and erected 14 PTFE membrane segments each approx. 500 m² in area. Each one is supported on two steel masts forming high points and at the sides is guyed back to booms attached to the structural steelwork. Owing to the size of the individual membrane segments, which are 30.6 m long and between 13 and 18 m wide, the erection work turned out to be very challenging. Furthermore, as the 14 segments are connected together in the transverse direction, it was vital to achieve a constant alignment over the entire length of the structure. Nevertheless, compared with a traditional form of construction, the combination of steel structure and membrane roof made it easier to keep to the tight timetable: the gallery was completed in May 2011 after a construction period of just five months.
