Project Name: Cone Trumpet Shape Reticular shell Structures of Sun Valley of Expo Axis Shanghai

Location：Pudong, Shanghai

Designer: SBA,Germany

Structure tonnage: 5300ton

Curtain Wall Types：Glass Curtain Wall PVDF Membrane

Project Overview：The structure system of Sun Valley is an inextricable, non-analytic, heterogeneous monolayer mesh reticulated shell (reticular shell) structure consisting of triangular grids covered by a glass curtain wall on the surface, which will allow the translucent of sunlight from the sun valley. It is one of the core buildings of the Expo. The project's design complexity, manufacturing difficulties and construction challenges have all set industry records in China and have been recognized for technological advancement. 

This project consist of 6 nos of 41.5 meter height trumpet flower shape cone type reticular shell steel structures with maximum diameter 90-97 meters at top and 20m diameter at bottom, which were mainly welded at site field.  The total area of glass curtain facade and skylighting is 31500m2. Full site field welding method is applied on this single layer of reticular shell structure. 

Totally there are 30738 pieces of the tubes of rectangular hollow section(RHS) and square hollow section(SHS) are used, with length vary between 1.0m to 3.0m and section depth between 180mm-550mm, the connection joints applies 6-bracket box-type section connection built-up by steel plate with minority quantity of salid cast iron 6-bracket steel joint. The tube and joint connections are all class type I full penetration welding and non destructive testing method(UT/RT/MT) were all applied by national qualified inspector hired by third party appointed by client.

Beautiful reverse trumpet flower shape glass curtain skylighting structure and tensioned membrane structure (3000nos of joints for each individual unit), the giant white membrane material(maximum piece area 1700sqm with 1mm PVDF coating for self-cleanning fuction to be tensioned by 31 pieces of external posts and 19 pieces of internal posts and 817 pieces of strand cables(maximum 700ton and 155mm diameter) with evenly tensions at various directiona and angles, the glass curtain wall system consists with more than 30000 pieces of super-white glasses

Welding type box section steel plate built-up 6-bracket node joint:

Typical membrane/cable connections

Structure under welding and construction

Structure under construction

Typical section view

General plan view

(Typical connection details)

(Detail connection drawing)