WJE PROJECTS

1964 World's Fair Buildings

 
CLIENT
National Academy of Sciences
LOCATION
New York, NY

Full-Scale Load Testing

WJE was retained by the National Academy of Sciences to conduct full-scale load tests on three buildings constructed for the 1964 New York World's Fair: the Chimes Building, Bourbon Street Building, and Rathskeller Building. The buildings were only two years old but were scheduled for demolition, making them ideal candidates for a study of building performance—a rare opportunity to test to failure full-scale structures representative of modern engineering and construction.


BACKGROUND

The 1964 World's Fair was an international exposition that ran for two seasons in the spring and summer of 1964 and 1965. It's theme, "Peace through Understanding," was symbolized by an 120-foot-diameter stainless steel globe that remains in the park to this day.

In the latter part of 1965, the idea of full-scale testing of selected structures of the World's Fair was advanced by WJE founder Jack Janney through his membership in the American Society of Civil Engineers. After discussions with officials of the New York World's Fair Corporation, WJE provided recommendations regarding feasibility of conducting various tests on the structures. In the spring of 1966, three buildings, representative of the design and construction of the era, were selected for the testing program.

SOLUTION

The Chimes Tower was subjected to dynamic excitation using four vibrators that were the only type in existence at the time. WJE founder Jack Wiss took measurements of the natural frequency of the tower for comparison with the calculated value. The test had $150,000 worth of instrumentation that recorded fifty channels of data.

The Bourbon Street Building was a steel structure with open web floor joists. The floor system was tested to failure using air pressure. The vacuum technique had been used on model tests before, but this was the first time the technique was used to load test a full-sized building to failure.

The Rathskeller Building featured a reinforced concrete floor slab that was tested to failure using hydraulic rams reacting against soil anchors installed through the basement floor. A total of 208 center-hole hydraulic rams of 30-ton capacity were used for the tests. The rams had to be specially made for the tests.

The results of the tests led to an improved understanding of how buildings behave and ultimately fail, especially the vulnerability of concrete buildings to failure in punching shear. 

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