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News Release from: DavyMarkham | Subject: Heavy duty welded fabrication
Edited by the Manufacturingtalk Editorial
Team on 03 August 2005
Fabrication challenges overcome on major
sculpture
One of Europe's largest heavy engineering shops overcame complex welding and fabrication challenges when building the 'B of the Bang' sculpture for Manchester, UK.
"It is both a stunning design and a miracle of engineering" -'The Observer' "The most complex core of fabricated steel the world has yet seen" - 'The Times
This article was originally published on Manufacturingtalk on 10 Jul 2008 at 8.00am (UK)
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These are just some of the accolades heaped upon 'B of the Bang', Britain's latest piece of public art, designed and built by Thomas Heatherwick Studio.
Commissioned by New East Manchester and project managed by Nader Mokhtari of Manage, it was fabricated by AK Heavy Engineering in partnership with contractor William Hare and engineers Packman Lucas.
Now that 'B of the Bang' has been officially launched by former Olympic gold medallist Linford Christie, whose words provided the inspiration for the sculpture's title, and over 15,000 man-hours of painstaking and skilled work have contributed toward a unique landmark, Sheffield, UK-based AK Heavy Engineering can reflect upon a truly awe-inspiring project and a job extremely well done.
For a workforce more usually involved in producing fabrications that serve a function, such as hydro-power turbines, steel rolling mills, tunnel borers, mine hoists and movable bridges, the contract offered a rare opportunity to be involved in originating a major artwork, with all the creativity, craftsmanship, collaboration, comment, even controversy that entails.
It also made TV stars of Sheffield welders, fabricators and technicians, since BBC2 television's 'Newsnight' programme was given exclusive rights to chronicle the whole project and produce a series of special reports, during which time the presenter, Cultural correspondent Madeleine Holt, actually conceived and gave birth to her second child.
'B of the Bang' itself generated a number of superlatives.
It is Britain's tallest sculpture, at 56m three times the height of Anthony Gormley's 'Angel of the North' and taller even than the Statue of Liberty in New York, USA.
Its angle of lean is ten times greater than the leaning Tower of Pisa, Italy, necessitating skilled computer-aided design, material selection and precision engineering, and if the 180 tapered spikes were laid end-to-end they would extend over 3km.
The giant core was transported across the Pennines on the largest lorry permitted on British roads and the whole assembly, including reinforced concrete foundations, weighed over 1,000 tonnes.
The project also threw up a number of technical challenges for AK Heavy Engineering when welding the core, the most complex element of the structure.
It was, for example, essential that the relative positional accuracy of each of the 175 spikes and 5 legs be as near perfect as possible.
So, working with William Hare's experienced fabricator Rob Nicholls, who carried out the complex dimensional inspections, AK Heavy Engineering had to construct the precise steel tube intersections, taking into account the inevitable distortion that occurs during welding and making carefully-calculated modifications to the computer model.
Professor Mike Burdekin of UMIST, Manchester, an internationally recognised expert on fracture mechanics, welded fabrications and fatigue in welded structures, was additionally consulted on the effects of strain ageing on the support legs.
As a result, these sections were subject to normalising heat treatment, to recrystallise the grain and negate the effects of cold-working, thereby ensuring that 'B of the Bang' would remain upright in all weather conditions, for many years to come.
The welding itself was carried out employing three different processes: submerged arc welding for the prefabricated spikes, flux cored wire arc welding methods for joining the main spikes to the core and manual metal arc welding where access was limited.
Special 2.5% nickel welding wire was used to avoid any potential microcracking problems.
AK Heavy Engineering's highly qualified welders had to adopt extremely contorted positions at times, leading to the televised comment: "They would not be out of place in the Kama Sutra".
Total welding time exceeded 6,000 man-hours, equating to some 100km of individual weld beads deposited, with not a single weld fault detected.
Even transportation proved a hurdle, since the huge low loader was too high to manoeuvre beneath the special steel frame that supported the 80 tonne core.
Thus the structure had to be jacked up by just two inches, to allow the 86-wheeled articulated lorry to reverse into position, and even then it scraped the giant factory roller doors when exiting.
During its time at AK's Prince of Wales Road works in Sheffield - one of the biggest production facilities in Western Europe that has fabricated many huge structures - 'B of the Bang' excited particular interest during regular factory tours and presentations for schools, colleges and customers.
Despite a preliminary slide show about the design and technical aspects, nothing quite prepared visitors for the scale of the piece, with young and old, engineers and non-engineers alike amazed at its shape and dimensions - a 'wow factor' indeed.
Inevitably, some questions have been raised about the GBP 1.4 million cost of the project, but Heatherwick remains hugely positive about the structure and the impact he believes it will have on East Manchester, providing a catalyst for regional regeneration.
Besides which, it created work for a lot of people in Britain's manufacturing sector and represents a genuine feat of British engineering and construction.
For AK Heavy Engineering's management and staff it proved a highly instructive exercise in working closely with a tight-knit group of steelworkers, metallurgists, project managers, engineers, technicians, craftsmen and creative minds, towards a major gateway project.
Moreover, the enthusiasm, excitement and pride of the team at Thomas Heatherwick Studio, Ron Packman and Toby MacLean of Packman Lucas, and project manager Nader Mokhtari of Manage, have also rubbed off on once sceptical technicians, which manifested itself when the sculpture was actually erected and remains to this day.
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