PENGANTAR REKAYASA

FORENSIK STRUKTUR
Dr.Eng Fakhruddin, S.T., M.Eng

KELOMPOK
D111 15 311 NADHILA FARASWATI R
D111 15 006 MOHAMMAD ADITYA EKO A.P.
D111 15 317 A. MOHAMMAD HABIBI Z.
D111 15 533 MUHAMMAD FATHUL RAHMAT H.

HISTORIC FAILURE
Hyatt Regency walkway collapse

2018
1. Define the failure
The Hyatt Regency walkway collapse took place at the Hyatt Regency Kansas City
hotel in Kansas City, Missouri, on July 17, 1981. Two walkways, one directly above
the other, collapsed onto a tea dance being held in the hotel's lobby. The falling
walkways killed 114 and injured 216. It was the deadliest structural collapse in U.S.
history until the collapse of the World Trade Center towers 20 years later.

The construction of the 40-story Hyatt Regency Kansas City began in May 1978.
Despite delays and setbacks, including an incident on October 14, 1979, when 2,700
square feet (250 m2) of the atrium roof collapsed due to the failure of one of the
connections at its northern end, the hotel officially opened on July 1, 1980.

One of the defining features of the hotel was its lobby, which incorporated a multistory
atrium spanned by elevated walkways suspended from the ceiling. These steel, glass
and concrete crossings connected the second, third and fourth floors between the north
and south wings. The walkways were approximately 120 ft (37 m) long and weighed
approximately 64,000 lb (29,000 kg). The fourth level walkway aligned directly above
the second level walkway.

Before
After

Background Case
 March 1976: Crown Center Redevelopment Corporation began to design Hyatt
Regency Hotel in Kansas City, Missouri
 April 4, 1978: Actual contract entered into by Gillum-Colaco, Inc., a Professional
Engineering Firm, G.C.E. and the architect, PBNDML Architects, Planners, Inc.
G.C.E. agreed to provide "all structural engineering services for a 750-room hotel
project located at 2345 McGee Street, Kansas City, Missouri." During that time,
Jack D. Gillum (the supervisor of the professional engineering activities of GCE.)
and Daniel M. Duncan (working under the direct supervision of Gillum, the
engineer responsible for the actual structural engineering work on the Hyatt
project) assisted Crown Center Redevelopment Corporation (the owner) and
PBNDML Architects, Planners, Inc. (the architect on the project) in developing
plans for the hotel project and deciding on its basic design.
 Spring 1978: Construction begins on hotel
 December 1978: Eldridge Construction Company, general contractor on the Hyatt
project, enters into subcontract with Havens Steel Company. Havens agrees to
fabricate and erect the atrium steel for the Hyatt project.
2. Collect Evidence

Original Design
 The original design consisted of long suspension rods hanging down from the
ceiling.
 These hanging suspension rods would then support upper and lower beams.
 The two beams would, in turn, bear the weight of the two walkway floors.
 In the proposed design, the rods were hung from the ceiling, then the upper deck
beams were threaded on and slid up the rods, then heavy washers and nuts where
run up the rods to support the upper beam.
 The lower beams were then similarly fitted onto the rods at the bottom, and again
were supported with nuts and washers under each end.
 This detail was shown on the engineering drawings that had been submitted to the
fabricator, Havens Steel
 Wide flange beams were used on either side of the walkway upon which was hung
a box beam
 A clip angle welded to the top of the beam was connected to the flange beams
with bolts
 One end of the walkway was welded to a fixed plate while a sliding bearing
supported the other end
  Each box beam of the walkway was supported by a washer and nut which was
threaded onto the supporting rod
 The beams consisted of two 8-inch channel sections welded toe to toe to make up
a box beam.
 The ends of the box beams were then drilled to receive the rods.
 The box beam consisted of two 8 x 8.5 MC channels
 The walkways were suspended from the ceilings by long rods.
 The rod would pass through the top walkway and on down to the bottom walkway.
 Under each walkway, a load-carrying nut would be used on each of the rods to
carry the load of the walkway.
 Since the original design called for running the nuts 30 feet up the rods, the entire
length of the rods had to be threaded.
 Threading 30 feet of rod is difficult and costly.
 The fabricator decided to modify the original design to make it easier and less
costly to construct.

3. Analyze the evidence

Over a year before the collapse (1979), the design of the walkway hanger rod
connections was changed in a series of events and mis-communications between the
fabricator (Havens Steel Company) and the engineering design team (GCE). Havens
Steel, the fabricator, changed the design from a one-rod to a two-rod system to simplify
the assembly task.

As Built Design
This design change, however, put a double load on the connector rod. The deviations
from the original design are as follows:
 One end of each support rod was attached to the atrium’s roof cross beams
 The bottom end went through the box beam and attached with a washer and nut
 A second rod was attached to the box beam 4 inches from the first rod
 They cut the rods in half and ran those halves from the roof to the top walkway
and placed nuts
 They then drilled another set of holes, which was offset 4 inches inward along the
axis of the box beam, in the top walkway and hung the other halves of the rods
from the top walkway.
 In the modified design, the fabricator had to thread only about 6 inches of each
end of each rod, a considerably easier task.

The deformed 4th Floor Beam

 The steel rods were of 31.75 mm diameter

4. The possible events that root causes for the failure

Possible caused of this disaster:
 Resonance, said some. The bridge was loaded down with hundreds of people,
DANCING. They overloaded the bridge because the were jumping up and down
on the bridge in unison.
 Quality of Materials, said some. The Contractor probably used inferior materials
which gave way under loading conditions. Contractors are often caught only after
a disaster exposes their errors.
 Poor installation, said others. Work is only as good as the workers who installed
the work, and clearly they must have been in a rush to get it done and didn’t
provide quality welds on the steel.

5. Validate the hypothesis through structural analysis

Analysis:
 The workers failed to realize that this doubled the load on the nuts under the top
walkway compared to the original design.
 In the original design, the load (weight) for each hanger rod was to be 90 kN.
 With the revised design, the load was increased to 180 kN on the fourth floor box
beam connections
 The National Bureau of standards (NBS) discovered that the cause of the walkway
collapse was that the rod hanger, attached to the ceiling and to the walkways,
pulled through the box bean due to lack of redundancy of load-bearing factors,
causing the connection supporting the 4th walkway to collapse onto the 2rd floor.
 Notice in diagram 1 that in the walkway design, Nut 1 supports only the walkway
above it.
 The weight of the second walkway is supported through the rod. In the walkway
built, Nut 1 not only holds the weight of the walkway above it, but also the hanging
weight of the second walkway and the rods used to support it.
 This proved to be more stress than the structure on which Nut 1 was supported
and it could not hold the extra load of the other walkway.
 Since the box beams were longitudinally welded, as proposed in the original
design, they could not hold the weight of the two walkways

Investigators found that changes to the design of the walkway's steel tie rods were
the cause of its failure.

Three days after the disaster, Wayne G. Lischka, an architectural engineer hired by
The Kansas City Star newspaper, discovered a significant change to the original design
of the walkways. Reportage of the event later earned the Star and its associated
publication the Kansas City Times a Pulitzer Prize for local news reporting in 1982.
Radio station KJLA would later earn a National Associated Press award for its
reporting on the night of the disaster.

The two walkways were suspended from a set of 1.25 in (32 mm) diameter steel tie
rods, with the second floor walkway hanging directly under the fourth floor walkway.
The fourth floor walkway platform was supported on three cross-beams suspended by
steel rods retained by nuts. The cross-beams were box girders made from C-channel
strips welded together lengthwise, with a hollow space between them. The original
design by Jack D. Gillum and Associates specified three pairs of rods running from
the second floor to the ceiling. Investigators determined eventually that this design
supported only 60% of the minimum load required by Kansas City building codes.

Havens Steel Company, the contractor responsible for manufacturing the rods,
objected to the original plan, since it required the whole of the rod below the fourth
floor to be screw threaded in order to screw on the nuts to hold the fourth floor
walkway in place. Indeed, these threads would probably have been damaged and
rendered unusable as the structure for the fourth floor was hoisted into position with
the rods in place. Havens therefore proposed an alternative plan in which two
separate—and offset—sets of tie rods would be used: one connecting the fourth floor
walkway to the ceiling, and the other connecting the second floor walkway to the
fourth floor walkway.

This design change proved fatal. In the original design, the beams of the fourth floor
walkway had to support only the weight of the fourth floor walkway, with the weight
of the second floor walkway supported completely by the rods. In the revised design,
however, the fourth floor beams were required to support both the fourth floor
walkway and the second floor walkway hanging from it.

The serious flaws of the revised design were compounded by the fact that both designs
placed the bolts directly through a welded joint connecting two C-channels, the
weakest structural point in the box beams. The original design was for the welds to be
on the sides of the box beams, rather than on the top and bottom. Photographs of the
wreckage show excessive deformations of the cross-section. During the failure, the
box beams split along the weld and the nut supporting them slipped through the
resulting gap between the two C-channels which had been welded together, which
contributed to the survivors' reports of the upper walkway falling several inches as the
nut was held only by the upper side of the box beams, before it too failed, allowing the
entire walkway to fall.
6. Arrive at a conclusion regarding the cause
Investigators concluded that the basic problem was a lack of proper communication
between Jack D. Gillum and Associates and Havens Steel. In particular, the drawings
prepared by Jack D. Gillum and Associates were only preliminary sketches but were
interpreted by Havens as finalized drawings. Jack D. Gillum and Associates failed to
review the initial design thoroughly, and accepted Havens' proposed plan without
performing basic calculations that would have revealed its serious intrinsic flaws — in
particular, the doubling of the load on the fourth-floor beams. It was later revealed that
when Havens called Jack D. Gillum and Associates to propose the new design, the
engineer they spoke with simply approved the changes over the phone, without
viewing any sketches or performing calculations.

The final investigation concluded the following:

• The walkways collapsed under loading substantially less than loads specified by
the building code.
• Any of the box beams at the fourth floor could have failed based upon the design
in the Shop Drawings
• Neither the box beams nor the hanging rods, even in the original design, met the
minimum code requirements. The original design may have been strong enough
to avoid the collapse, but was not sufficient to ever pass a design review.
• Neither the quality of the materials nor the quality of the workmanship contributed
to the collapse.
• The Missouri court system identified the Engineers as responsible parties in the
collapse for failing to recognize the fundamental difference between the original
design and the substitution request.

7. Prepare the final report

Photo Attachment