ABSTRACT
Abstract As part of a project on the long term study of full scale structures, a monitoring system has been installed in the trussed roof of the Meeting Hall of the Swaminarayan Hindu Mission in London. The hall is 45m x 55m in plan with the trusses spanning the 45m side at a height of 7.5m above floor level. The design of the roof trusses was governed by the deflection rising from the 'abnormal' load from the movable, hung acoustic doors. This paper details the load tests and in-service monitoring performed on this structure. Both load test results and in-service monitoring data are analysed and compared with computer-based results to understand the behaviour of the structural system. As a result some important observations are made on the design and monitoring of purpose-designed three dimensional load-sharing structural systems. Keywords: Load tests, monitoring, serviceability, 3-D truss system
1 Introduction
The Meeting Hall of the Swaminarayan Hindu Mission in London has dimensions of 45m x 55m. The hall has roof trusses spanning the 45m dimension. The main trusses (Fig. 1), identified as T and V according to their grid lines hi the building plan (Fig. 2), are 4.5m in height at centre span, diminishing to 2.5m at their ends where they are supported on stanchions 7.5m tall. As part of a project on the long term behaviour of full scale structures, a monitoring system has been installed in the roof trusses T and V. These nominally identical, unevenly spaced trusses had been designed for the case of the most heavily loaded truss. In addition to environmental loads and dead loads, the trusses have been designed to carry the substantial 'abnormal' live load of acoustic doors used to subdivide the main hall area into smaller rooms.
