The new Amundsen-Scott Science Station under construction at the South Pole, Antarctica. Wind is from the left.
t he new Science Facility under construction at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station (above) is a recent example of an elevated building in an extreme polar region that was designed with snow drift effects in mind. The existing station’s dome and metal arch sheds were con- structed on-grade in 1975. The dome, seen behind the new station in Figure 8, is nearly buried under snow while most of the arch sheds already are. The new elevated facility includes a 5m open air space between the snow surface and the underside of the building. Its support structure facilitates raising the building whenever the permanent snow cover around the building has significantly increased in depth. When complete, the building will be comprised of a row of two C-shaped modules linked with a two storey bridge (in plan view, think of one C above another with a link between). The building row is oriented perpendicular to the prevailing winds, which seems contrary to popular thinking with regards to snow design. However, this orientation maxi- mized the building’s exposure to the wind, which is essential for drift control with a raised building. Whereas, orienting the row of C-shaped buildings with the wind significantly reduces the wind exposure of the
downwind modules. Wind flow under these modules would have been reduced and caused early burial of the downwind modules in snow. The leading edge of the building’s façade will be chamferred at the bottom to improve wind flow aerodynamics under the structure. The construction stage of the building shown above has not reached a point where the cladding or the chamferred features have been installed. Photographs of the new and existing stations can be found in The Antarctic Sun Newspaper web site (www.polar.org/antsun/) and following the link The Antarctic Photo Library. A review of the various snowdrift features and the studies under- taken during the development of this unique polar building has been published in the Proceedings of the 10th International ASCE Conference on Cold Regions Engineer- ing - Putting Research into Practice . 1999 — 1. Brooks,Willam D. Elevated Station Design for the New South Pole Redevelopment Project at Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station . 2. Waechter, Bill F. and Williams, Colin J. Snowdrift Design Guidance For The New South Pole Station .
Bill Waechter, an Associate and Project Director with Rowan Williams Davies & Irwin Inc. (RWDI) Consulting Engineers (Guelph, ON), has spent 26 years assessing wind and drifting snow conditions for planners, engineers and architects. He has consulted on drifting snow conditions in temperate, Arctic and Antarctic regions and has traveled to over 35 com- munities ‘North of 60’.
On Site review 11
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Spring 2004
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