Engineering on existing structures: pathologies, surgeries, transplants, emergencies. Three practical cases

Abstract

Structural engineering in rehabilitation and strengthening works requires an effort for prior knowledge of the structure (geometric and mechanical), as well as knowledge of the codes and the analysis and design process in the past; and it also requires an engineering effort during the civil works, far greater that a new structure requires.

The article explains three works developed in this area and which have mentionable singularities:

- The project to increase the bleachers at the Santiago Bernabeu stadium, full of construction conditions and repetition, in a strictly designed structure and built in a difficult time to guarantee quality (completion in 2011).

- The new Teatro Príncipe Pío in a 100-year-old warehouse, protected heritage, where the challenge is to rehabilitate the structure to respectfully accommodate a new functionality (completion in 2020).

- The rehabilitation of a hotel in Ibiza, where the intense characterization work did not reveal the true state of the structure: the challenge of this work was to apply emergency engineering to try to make it possible to reuse it, without demolishing (completion in 2019).