Panama City, Panama

Tocumen International Airport

Scope/Solutions

The new South Terminal Building at Tocumen International Airport is 666 m long, 25 m high, encloses 75,000 m2 of space, and is separated into five zones by seismic joints. Zone 3 is a triangle shaped four-story, reinforced concrete and steel structure with dimensions of 162 m X 145 m. SGH collaborated with Foster + Partners, architect/engineer for the project, to analyze Zone 3 and design the long span roof structure.

Since the terminal is located in a high seismicity area, the design employed a performance-based criteria targeting Life Safety performance for Maximum Considered Earthquake (2,475 year) shaking. SGH analyzed the structure for Zone 3 comprising a lateral-force-resisting system with strategically located special reinforced concrete shear walls and special reinforced concrete moment frames, and a long-span roof constructed with tubular steel members framing into large diameter reinforced concrete columns to form composite special moment frames. Highlights of our work include:

  • Assessing performance through a nonlinear time history analysis (horizontal and vertical excitation) with explicit hysteretic modeling of the beams, columns, and shear walls
  • Coordinating with Foster + Partners to select member sizes satisfying the performance criteria
  • Designing the long span roof structure employing design criteria from AISC 360-10 and American Petroleum Institute’s publication for tubular member connection design for offshore structures
  • Preparing construction documents for the long span roof structure
  • Responding to peer review comments

Project Summary

Icon: completion-date

2022

Completion Date
Solutions
New Construction
Services
Structures
Markets
Infrastructure & Transportation
Client(s)
Foster + Partners
Specialized Capabilities
Building Design | Seismic Engineering

Key team members

Ronald Hamburger
Consulting Principal
415.343.3015 rohamburger@sgh.com
Anindya Dutta
Principal
415.343.3057 adutta@sgh.com

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