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Essay on L'Ambience Plaza Slab Collapse
L'Ambiance Plaza was planned to be a sixteen-story building with thirteen apartment levels topping three parking levels. It consisted of two offset rectangular towers, 63 ft by 112 ft each, connected by an elevator. Seven-inch thick post tensioned, concrete slabs and steel columns comprised its structural frame. Post tensioning overcomes the tensile weakness of concrete slabs by placing high strength steel wires along their length or width before the concrete is poured. After the concrete hardens, hydraulic jacks pull and anchor the wires compressing the concrete.
The lift-slab method of construction, patented by Youtz and Slick in 1948, was utilized in the construction of this building. Following this technique, the floor slabs for all sixteen levels were constructed on the ground, one on top of the other, with bond breakers between them. Then packages of two or three slabs were lifted into temporary position by a hydraulic lifting apparatus and held into place by steel wedges. This hydraulic lifting apparatus consisted of a hydraulic jack on top of each column with a pair of lifting rods extending down to lifting collars cast in the slab. Once the slabs were positioned correctly, they were permanently attached to the steel columns.
Two shear walls in each tower were to provide the lateral resistance for the completed building on all but the top two floors. These two floors depended on the rigid joints between the steel columns and the concrete slabs for their stability. Since the shear wall played such an indispensable role in the lateral stability of the building, the structural drawings specified that during construction the shear walls should be within three floors of the lifted slabs.
The total collapse of a building under construction in Bridgeport, Connecticut has been cited as an example total progressive collapse. On April 23, 1987, a planned sixteen-story building about halfway through its construction, collapsed due to deficient temporary connections....
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