My recent projects. Multifunctional shopping complex

The objective of this project was creation of an engineering solution for the multifunctional shopping complex, which the customer planned to build in the area of crossing of four lively highways connecting the densely populated district with the centre of city and with exit roads to the suburbs. The shopping complex was to be placed near the underground station with a high passenger traffic flow and should have direct passenger communication. The complex should have a multistory underground car park, an overground zone for shops and offices with total square of more than 47500 sq.m. (including 21500 sq.m. for lease). At the moment of the beginning of designing, transport situation was complicated in the area of object placement, and the traffic organization scheme needed to be fully revised.

The work aimed at project creation of an object with a parking and office area, which would fall in with the existing building development and have direct communication with the underground station hall.

Background

At the same time, a traffic management scheme had to be changed to increase traffic capacity in this transport node. The designing bureau was a general contractor, which took a responsibility for development of the architectural and construction part of the project. This company hired me especially to create a new traffic management scheme and to design the technological nodes of the parking and the underground zone. The decision was based on my previous experience in development and construction of the cast-in-place and precast concrete reservoirs, where the modern methods of buried walls construction were used, and also considering my specialized education in traffic management field.

On the one hand, my part of the work consisted in searching for original designs of the underground part of the complex, which had to be attached to the overground part; on the other hand I had to integrate the parking in a new scheme of automobiles and pedestrians traffic management. Thus, my obligations included: prototype analysis and engineering design of the underground parking with 400 places capacity for the multifunctional complex; selection of necessary methods to build the underground part, considering proximity of a railway station; adoption of a traffic scheme in the construction area to new conditions during construction (a temporary scheme) and its posterior modernization for traffic flow optimization after the construction finished; author’s supervision during construction for prompt solution of arising problems and design choices development.

All necessary strength calculations and calculation of elements and underground structures, rough construction estimate, general drawings of the building and original (non-typical) technical solutions I made by myself. Drawings of typical nodes and all standard calculations were made by general contractor’s specialists. Also I provided the required calculation to substantiate necessity of changes in the traffic management scheme for approvement in the supervisory bodies. Some corrections were added by the specialists of the Traffic Management Committee. 

Solution

At the first stage, before design starts, it was necessary to select a proper traffic management scheme and choose a certain place for multifunctional centre placement on the proposed site (master plan development). I have analysed transport density and traffic capacity of the existing roads and crossings in the construction area and have drawn a conclusion that the best traffic management scheme here will be a circular (roundabout) traffic scheme.

Hence, the task was to place the parking within the bounds of this ring, providing access for the pedestrians to the main building from the underground station hall as well as from the overground crosswalks. Motor vehicles should enter the parking from the ring-road as well, and it was necessary to minimize obstacles for transit transport caused by route change and speed down of the vehicles entering the parking. In this case I used my knowledge of traffic management acquired during my study at the State University of Architecture & Civil Engineering at the Road Traffic Management Department. Firstly, I have developed a temporary traffic scheme for the whole period of construction. After that, I developed a perspective scheme of road node (road interchange) reconstruction and a permanent traffic management scheme after termination of the construction, considering traffic intensity increase.

After the position of the shopping centre had been determined, and it had been decided that the complex should have a cylindrical form, I made comparison of different types of underground parkings, which could be used under the given conditions, on correlation between cost and total area to square and number of car spaces. During the analysis, all existing garages were divided in two groups – with inclined or spiral ways for entry/exit and with lifts. The garages with inclined floors could not be used here, because they imply primarily a rectangular form of building and may cause holdups under restricted conditions in rush-hours. The garages with spiral floors mean construction of separate descents, which are expensive in underground construction and restrict the number of additional parking places. The garages with lifts are very expensive and decrease traffic capacity, as queues of vehicles will stand on the ring in wait for entry.

So, I decided to adopt my invention patented in Russia (RU 2129197) - “Multilevel garage complex“, as in this case there is an opportunity to use space for parking to the maximum, it is simple and cheap in underground construction, it is easily adjusted to the ring traffic scheme.

This is a constructive solution, where building consists of two coaxial (one inside another) vertical caissons. Between caissons walls on the floors there are separate parking places and access ways to them – two  symmetrical (left and right) spiral roads, leaning on external (or internal) building walls from the one side, and on the supporting reinforced concrete pillars from the other side. One road passes along the parking spaces at external caisson walls, and  the other - along the parking spaces at internal caisson walls. Roundabout inside the garage is realized only in one direction, which increases traffic safety. There are common traffic sections (areas) in the places of junction of the symmetrical spiral roads to each other (two junctions per a circle, as the internal and external spirals differ: one is left and the other is right). These sections serve for change of direction from ascent to descent and vice versa (if necessity arises).

This solution also allows to use the central part of the underground garage for additional parking as well as for rented spaces.

To integrate the underground parking into the existing ring traffic, two semicircle roads with a single path go from the underground building to the ring area: one for entry (descent) to the garage and the other for exit (ascent) from it. A top mark of the underground part of external walls coincides with a lower mark of concrete road surface on ring traffic area, and overall depth of the garage (18 m) allowed to develop four levels of parking places to achieve the required capacity.

In order to prevent crossing of the main stream of visitors with traffic flow, I have designed a pedestrian subway sizes 12mx4m of specified width through the parking form the underground station hall and another subway nearby.

Also I have provided recommendations for further calculation of ventilation and air-conditioning systems, storm drainage and groundwater drainage systems.

As generally construction of the parking was unconventional, during the development, besides the AutoCAD/Revit program, I also used the APM Civil Engineering automated calculation and construction design system and the APM Structure3D module for project and checking calculation of reinforced concrete constructions, creating the stress map, strength and dynamic analysis of parts by FEM. The rest of typical nodes and overground part were calculated by specialists of the project contractor company.

Relying on the geological engineering survey data in the construction site obtained from a company-builder of underground stations, I decided to use a caisson method as the cheapest for construction of external walls.

After that, I made calculation of rock steadiness, chose a type of shore for the caisson, and also determined main and additional loads on the shaft collar shore from the buildings and structures surrounding the construction site on surface.

Thereafter, I elaborated a detailed work performance plan and gave a complex assessment of probable consequences of construction for the neighbouring buildings. Here I used my previous experience in buried structures calculation obtained during designing of drinking water storage and filtering reservoirs.

After designing and project approvement had been finished, I began to provide author’s supervision over building erection. Special attention was given to caisson sinking (external walls) and prevention of sinking irregularity (lateral inclination), providing regular geodesic control.

After the external caisson wall had been built, I provided control over reinforcing and concrete works during erection of monolithic internal cylindrical walls, pillars, floors - symmetrical spiral roads. To erect the internal cylindrical wall, I have developed a method of using self-propelled plants of horizontally sliding formwork (a rail carriage with pillars and a winch for shield lifting), which would move on a round rail way  for concreting of internal caisson walls. This method is economically rational for large diameter of ring, as is in our case.

 

The floors have been built using reusable formwork systems produced by “Peri” (Germany), as in this case every formwork set was individual for each part of the building. That is why I have projected them in RUMBA, a computer program for formwork selection and three-dimensional arrangement, and then they were assembled and mounted at the site.

  

Upon construction termination the new circular traffic management scheme proved its efficiency, as measurements have shown increase of intersection capacity in general. This allowed to avoid holdups in rush hours and queues at node access way, despite the fact that density has increased by 2.5 times in the result of construction of such building.

Summary

Successful accomplishment of construction has shown that the goal to integrate the multifunctional complex with the underground parking into the traffic circle had been achieved. Also underground space under a high-density area has been used efficiently, and the traffic management scheme has been improved. These results were produced due to the deep analysis of collected data on transport unit and application of relevant methodologies related to traffic capacity computation and traffic volume planning. My role in the project consisted in designing and full engineer’s development of the underground part of the object. I used my inventions, adapted and used the modern methods of underground construction. As a result, I have acquired additional knowledge of underground construction, which I used during designing as well as control over building erection.

My recent projects. Designing of reservoirs

The story took place in Russia in 2007 and related to designing of reservoirs intended for drinking water filtering, conditioning and storage for different industrial, administrative and dwelling facilities.

Background

The aim was to propose new technological solutions to major industrial companies, relating not only to drinking water filtering, conditioning and storage, but to purification of sewage discharged from industrial objects. These solutions were to be implemented by the customer’s representatives afterwards.

In connection with corrosive wear of drinking water supply pipelines, that had not been renovated since the USSR disintegrated, and also stiffening of ecological requirements to purification of potable water got from water-purifying systems of enterprises, there was a need in development of a universal technical solution, which would allow to filter and store huge amount of water, especially in areas with lack of water. Effective normative limitations for prepared drinking water storage duration in many reservoirs (not more than 48 hours) led to necessity of installation of large number of water level sensors in every reservoir and constant quality control. The existing drinking water reservoirs were technically outdated, and their reconstruction was economically unreasonable due to necessity of complete renewal of internal facing, pipelines and stop valves.

My research has shown, that according to the official statistics, in Russia over 60 per cent of water is consumed by industry, and the government has adopted a program for water saving technologies implementation and water reuse (closed water circulation) to drop this figure. Russia also possesses great reserves of artesian water, which is not enough used due to lack of sufficient number of storage reservoirs. The problem of sewage filtering was very keen, because until recently large amount of runoff came to pools without proper disinfection due to wear of sewage treatment facilities.

The project was aimed at engineering development of new facilities for water storage and utilization with an integrated purification system. This project implied its integration into the existing water purification system at enterprises and preparation of universal recommendations on construction technology for this building on territories with different geology and housing density.

My task was to create a structural layout of reservoirs with continuous water cycle (water substitution) for getting and saving high quality water. Also, I had to choose a corresponding water filtering technology, materials and equipment for its realisation and integrate it into the developed project afterwards.

 

Because of inhomogeneity and bad quality of grounds on the most of the assumed construction site I had to select and rework a technology of erection of buried reservoirs.

Personally I, as a chief designer, performed work connected with selection of analogues and prototypes of technical solutions, their analysis, technical solutions development, designing and calculation of building structures, selection of ways and methods of their construction.

To detect still water zones, producing negative effect on drinking water quality, hydrodynamic and mathematical calculations of the internal reservoir scheme, placement of internal walls and water flow inside the reservoirs were made by the specialists from the Research and Development Institution of the Ministry of Defence of the RF and afterwards were tested on a prototype model.

Solution

As I concerned the theme of reservoirs construction during my study at the University of Architecture & Civil Engineering, and based on my research of the known types of reservoir storages for the local settlements near the manufacturing entity, I have chose and adapted a scheme of several reservoirs with a cascade overflow system of their filling with drinking water and with vertical water circulation. The advantages of this system include regular water reserve renovation in all reservoirs and possibility of additional connection of new large-sized reservoirs to the existing feed reservoirs.

To check operation of the system and to improve it, I have made a proposal to test it on a prototype model to decrease the number of still water zones, which affect organoleptic properties of water. The involved specialists have detected problems of water stagnation in the upper part of the reservoir when fresh water comes in. To solve this problem, they have proposed a scheme of water intake dibhole installation in the lower part of the tower. I have made some revisions in typical design, lowered the level of central well burial, and changed the scheme of water admission and water intake hoppers in the lower part of the building.

I proposed to use block tubings for construction of the reservoirs to unify elements of reservoir external walls assembly and its central circular tower, which has reduced erection time and simplified reservoir construction technology. According to the elaborated work performance plan, assembly of the block tubings is made from an inventory platform hung up inside the tower and shifted up as far as the tower is erected, which has a positive impact on safety.

Absence of steel embedded items and metalware inside the reservoir excludes works on their metallization (zinc coating protection against corrosion).

I provided a possibility of extending capacity of a reservoir already being in the process of operation, having prepared a technology of wall expansion to necessary volume with simultaneous increase of bearing capacity by insertion of a coaxial supporting cylindrical tower.

To additionally simplify the construction, I have minimized the number of stop valves and water level sensors in the reservoirs with the help of the cascade overflow system, enabling to control only the last reservoir.

To provide remote industry and populated areas with potable water and to filter and condition water, I have proposed to put filtering backfill inside the central tower. Here I have realized my previous research in water purification field (RU 2160231 and RU 2163565  – “Drinking water purification and conditioning tank”).

Connection of additional reservoirs has increased significantly reliability of the existing household water supply system. Organoleptic properties of purified water remained acceptable for a long time due to regular water circulation and absence of still water zones. After the still water zones had been eliminated, there was no necessity in regular cleaning of the internal walls of the reservoir from microflora putrilage, which also has reduced exploitation cost.

When I designed water reservoirs for nuclear plants to solve the problem of radioactive water utilization, I had to provide leak tightness. In my scheme of a reservoir for contaminated water storage, radioactive water comes in the internal tank of the reservoir, and the external well contains clear water and serves as a natural buffer preventing penetration of contaminated liquid outside the building.

Also I have finalized internal building structure and provided access for service staff to take preventive measures. To reduce cost of construction without loss of water purification quality, I have reduced quantity of metal by replacement of reservoir stainless steel lining with fibrous concrete.

Also the reservoir system could be used at new nuclear power plants as an alternative to the pools of bubble flask type for the emergency reactor shutdown system. I have sent these proposals to one nuclear power plant in Russia for making changes in project documentation of construction of new blocks. Additionally I have modified technical solutions to use the building for utilization of other liquid and solid radioactive waste, for example, reactors taken from nuclear-power submarines.

To build buried reservoirs under severe engineering and geological conditions, I have chosen and almost adopted a technology of drifting works. This method of cylindrical reservoir construction included assembly of two coaxial internal and external drop caissons and their sinking by their own weight with a swamp weight. As a result, influence of infavourable engineering-geological conditions on drifting quality is reduced, and sizes of the construction site become less due to usage of internal caisson space for building erection.

This method was supplemented in the shortest possible time, when the buried reservoirs were being built on water-saturated dust sands. Suffosion (washing-out of tiny particles of ground with pumped-out water) took place during construction in a zone with a high groundwater level when pumping-out water, which threatened integrity of grounds and foundations nearby. I have applied the drifting method with a drop caisson in thixotropic jacket with underwater excavation by using special heavy automatic grabs. The main difference from the typical drop caisson construction method is that underground water is not pumped out during ground development. Ground is fed onto the surface by caterpillar cranes with capacity of 25 t together with large-span gantry cranes. Water, removed with the developed ground, is forcibly made up of pouring within the limits of the caisson contour to keep the natural groundwater level. In this case there is no necessity of a cutoff curtain (a wall in ground), which makes construction cheaper.

When geology of the construction site is saturated with big boulders, I offered to supplement this method with construction of a forward caisson of lesser diameter, 5-6 metres deeper than the main caisson, with a sand-gravel filter. This caisson should be used as a structural element of the building, performing two functions. Firstly, when the main caisson meets a boulder and hangs up, one-time short pumping-out of water takes place through the small caisson to destroy the boulder by a nonseparable method. Secondly, after the main caisson reaches the design mark, the bottom can be build without underwater concreting of the obstruction, which reduces its cost and material consumption. While the bottom is being built, short-term water depression is made through the pilot borehole filter, and after the bottom of the original hole is built, the pilot borehole filter is concreted under water.

 It should be noted that the pilot borehole increases cost by 10 per cent and extends the period of construction of a typical reservoir by 2 months, but usually this method is the only solution for places with dense industrial development. Also this method can be used for construction of cylindrical buildings of different purpose.

Additional time and money can be saved owing to the possibility of performance of detailed engineering and geological surveys simultaneously with construction, because permanent monitoring and correction of verticality and speed of external caisson walls immersion allows to eliminate slants immediately. Volume of assembly works inside the well at a zero point can be augmented to the maximum before immersion.

Summary

As a whole, the project has played a big role in region development, as the technical concepts, which I suggested, were realized afterward during construction of different buried objects. The technical solutions, got in the course of designing, connected with water circulation in a reservoir, and the method of buried reservoir construction were also used in the Candidate's dissertation by the specialists from the 26 Research and Development Institution of the Ministry of Defence of the RF. Work on this project gave me an opportunity to apply wide-ranging knowledge of engineering and related areas. I considerably deepen my knowledge of underground construction, geology and hydrodynamics. Skilful job related to important structures determination and concentration on them enabled to save a lot of time. My leading role in the project allowed to implement my previous ideas formalized in Russian patents, that indicate to their technical correctness. The given project allowed me to broaden my knowledge in buried objects construction and improve my level of team work ability.

My recent projects. Electrical substations

The project under consideration was aimed at creation of base (typical) architectural and construction project(s) of transformer substations drawings according to the effective Electrical Installation Regulations (EIR) and the Construction Norms & Regulations (SNiP) adopted in Russia after the breakup of the Soviet Union.

Background

In recent years, new building materials and construction production technologies become widely applicable and more space-saving types of electrical equipment and plants become available. That is why a need in full revision of the projects had arisen. With the economic growth in Russia the building and construction industry has improved rapidly, so need in electricity has also become higher, especially in higher-powered electrical substations. At the same time, the situation in Russia was difficult, because an overwhelming majority of the substations had been built between 1930s and 1970s. Of course, they required either full replacement or reconstruction, where it was possible on economic grounds.

Therefore, a concomitant task of the project was unification of the inspection methodology to determine technical state of a building with an electrical substation inside, and also selection of typical solutions for reconstruction with respect to modern engineering and technical tendencies. That unification simplifies considerably the process of approval of electrical substations construction by the supervisory authorities.

Generally, creation of an architectural and construction drawing base was my responsibility, for at that moment the company planned to take a dominant position in this segment of the local market, and none of the design organizations had a similar specialization and engineering and technical base in the city, given the fact that demand for this kind of projects increased every day.

In outline, my part of the project consisted in searching for and collecting the existing typical electrical substations projects (cooperating with the other design companies and draft libraries), their further technical analysis and considerable revision. At a later stage, when a customer showed interest, a group of specialists and I made inspection of a substation or a construction object, then I selected the most suited project and bound the building to it, taking into account peculiarities of the surrounding environment of the construction site. After the whole project had been approved by all supervision bodies and confirmed by the customer, construction began and I made general oversight of the project and its changes, performed author’s supervision at the stage of reconstruction or new construction.

I was at the head of a group of specialists consisted of two experienced electric engineers and one construction engineer, who had good drafting skills and practical construction experience. That part of designing work connected with selection of electric equipment to be placed inside a substation was performed by them. Also they made rough drawings of a typical substation, which I corrected afterward.

My Workplace Activity

Thus, at the first stage I had the following tasks: to search for the typical projects, upon which the existing Russian electrical substations had been built; look through the available foreign substations projects; make changes in the projects, and redesign the constructions if necessary, using my personal experience and effective standards; redraw the revised parts or a whole project in electronic format.

Search for the typical projects was performed mainly in the public technical library and also I used customers’ projects of the built substations. Additionally, foreign experience had been analysed on the basis of paper materials collected at different construction conferences and exhibitions. Accordingly, it was necessary to change material specification, because the construction standards and properties of used materials had changed as well. I had analysed the changes in the SNiP of the RF adopted in the last years and studied the assortment and properties of the construction materials, which are used or can be used instead of the existing. Scrutiny of basic material’s properties in developers’ catalogues had helped a lot. After that, I had added an explanation note to the projects, with recommendations on how to use specific materials, which conform to the substation construction requirements best of all.

The deep research had shown that the main tendency in substations designing was the attempt to minimize walking space and use internal area for electrical equipment as much as possible. Especially this problem concerns construction of a new substation on a dense city development area, where present-day projects can’t place the required equipment inside due to limited dimensions of a plot allotted for the substation. In the result, the base (typical) projects of Common Complete Transformer Substations (Universal 1 CCTS for oil transformers and Universal 1M and Universal 2M CCTS for “dry” transformers of Trihal type) had been developed. This allowed to place a substation with required capacity on the restricted area by minimizing passages and interior walls thickness.

 

The AutoCAD/Revit program was used in designing, with the help of which I transferred old projects in electronic form and remade creatively. For example, internal dimensions had been expanded by me to the maximum (new equipment often cannot be housed in old substations); new unit coupling methods had been applied; problems of acoustic insulation and lightning protection also had been solved by me in a new way.

In every specific case of the CCTS building binding to the site I faced necessity of detailed calculation of foundation laying depth (depending on normative and calculated soil freezing depth), determination of foundation bearing capacity and building settlement in general (as a huge number of cable inlets and outlets in the foundation edges limit permissible settlements to 50 mm).

Also, it was very important to calculate correctly the drainage system around the CCTS building, as the groundwater level is very high and irregular and geology is bad, which is usual for current region in general. In connection with great expenditure of time and efforts spent for detailed calculation in every project, search for analogous computer programs had been made to automate this process, but unsuccessfully. All foreign programs for foundation calculation were poorly adapted to the Russian standard system, and drainage calculation programs had not been found at all, because the programs like “Hydraflow Storm Sewers Extension” for AutoCAD were created only in 2009. Having relied on my previous experience in multifunctional underground complexes designing and my knowledge of foundations and drainage systems obtained in the process of education, I together with the students-programmers have elaborated a foundation calculator and a drainage calculator based on Microsoft Excel enabling to get necessary data on foundation dimensions, their laying depth and drainage pipes diameter, using the initial parameters.

Workers of my department helped me, but they did not have experience in electrical substations construction designing, so I had to instruct them additionally, usually in the form of brief lectures about destination of the elements of the substation project. Also in the course of the project I had advanced vocational training courses at the Military Engineering and Technical University and occupied the position of Chief Engineer.

 

1. A business customer provided and obtained approval of technical design assignment.
2. Equipment lay-out inside a substation and the corresponding requirements were determined in compliance with electrical engineers’ observations.
3. On the basis of equipment type and dimensions I designed a new project or introduced changes in the typical project whereas design engineer made the typical units drafts.
4. The project was ratified by the customer and then I submitted it to the supervisory authorities for approval.
5. At the stage of construction foreman’s observations concerning the project were submitted to design engineer.
6. I performed author’s supervision and introduced modifications required in the project.  

When a bank of typical electronic drafts had been created, the second stage started. At this stage I adapted the typical project to the specific customer’s needs. I had to find a creative approach to the designing stage, because the projects were divided in two types: projects of a new substation added to the existing master plot plan; and projects of substation reconstruction, in which reinforcement was to be made on the basis of technical state inspection and replanning, with regard for new electric equipment to be installed in it. After this, I approved the finished project in a supervision organization.

Considerable complications occurred when solving tasks of reconstruction of the existing substation to update it technically (place new transformers of more power and modern electrical equipment), because the main question is – whether the building is suitable for reconstruction or it is necessary to demolish it and build a new one due to walls condition or lack of space for the modern equipment. I have studied and modified the visual and instrumental technical state inspection system for the old substation buildings, using special equipment to determine brick masonry condition, concrete durability and reinforcement state. For example, I made radiometric thermal imaging inspection with the help of SAT HOTFIND thermal imager, enabling to determine instantly wall condition on the basis of the thermogram. During substations state inspection I used my knowledge of material science obtained at the State University of Architecture & Civil Engineering.

Also, when performing author’s supervision over construction of a new substation, I revealed some typical problems. For example, sometimes there were problems with installation of pipes (transit blocks) for input/output of cables and ground loop in the foundation walls, because the missed openings for them had to be bored right during construction, which causes certain difficulties. Later on, when I had come in deeper contact with the producing factory, I made a proposal to create a universal project, enabling to  produce and assemble a substation directly at the producing factory and then mount it on the construction site on a tight schedule.

Using previous experience in typical substations development, I cooperated with specialists from my department and developed a project of the Universal Complete Transformer Substation (UCTS) for two transformers with 630...1600 kVa rating each in the form of ready-to-operate reinforced concrete frames with mounted electrical equipment inside. Further UCTS installation and its connection to the electrical network takes 24 hours and is made directly on the assembled reinforced concrete foundation plate, prepared for mounting by a team of builders. So, full independence of substation construction was being achieved in the shortest possible time.

Summary

The given project has played a big role in regional electrical substation designing, as afterwards it was used by many designing organizations as a model. Designing process unification and conformity to the effective standards had been achieved, typical problems had been solved and new types of substations had been developed. Work efficiency has increased due to time reduction for every project, which has led to increase of number of customers. I played a key role in this project because I not only fulfilled general management, but also selected typical projects, developed creatively and implemented new projects, supervised construction right up to the commissioning. Productive work and colleagues’ consultations also improved quality of the project.