Issue 16

The new £60M Design and Build Cancer Centre for the Belfast City Hospital Trust opened in March 2006. The centre replaces existing facilities at the Belvoir Park Hospital site and will provide patients and their families with a comprehensive range of treatment and support services, from screening and detection, to diagnosis and treatment, through to follow-up care. This paper sets out to describe the structural challenges encountered and the solutions adopted to meet the stringent requirements of the medical specialists and the equipment manufacturers in providing one of the largest cancer care facilities in the United Kingdom. In particular the hospital structure was to be designed to house a Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) Suite, Radiology Suite, Simulator Suite, Computer Tomography (CT) Scanning Suite and Radiotherapy Department. Eur. lng. M. L. Manson, CEng, FIStructE, FIEI, MICE, MCIWEM, AIWSc, FConsE Ferguson McIlveen LLP R. D. Nicholl, BEng(Hons), CEng, MIStructE Ferguson McIlveen LLP

Dundrum is in Dublin’s southern suburbs and has been undergoing major regeneration works during the last 5 years. These works have included a new town bypass that will eventually link into the M50 Southern Cross motorway, a new LUAS station (light transit system) with links to Dublin city centre and a major redevelopment of Dundrum town centre itself. Phase 1 of the town centre redevelopment covers a 22 acre site and provides a mixture of retail, office and apartment accommodation. Structural steelwork was chosen for the main superstructure and the steelwork fabricator was brought on to the design team at an early stage. A feature of this project is the partnership developed between the consulting engineer, architect, project manager, main contractor and specialist subcontractors. The project has required a flexible approach to change whether this is due to specific client requests or through the adoption of the latest techniques to accelerate the construction programme. This approach has been beneficial to all parties, not least the client and has lead to all construction milestones being met despite a typically tight programme and numerous design changes along the way. Chris Durand, BEng(Hons), PhD, CEng, MIStructE, MWeldI Chief Design Engineer, Fisher Engineering Ltd

In contrast with the level of understanding of flexural behaviour of reinforced concrete members, shear behaviour remains less well understood. This paper presents the findings of a study carried out with the aim of improving understanding of shear behaviour of continuous reinforced concrete beams without shear reinforcement. The findings are significant since most design methods assume that the shear capacity is the sum of the strength of the unreinforced cross-section and the strength of the reinforcement. An extensive study into the effects of concrete strength, shear span/effective depth ratio, and reinforcement content has been carried out. This study incorporated a laboratory testing programme, coupled with the use of a non-linear finite element model. A design approach for the prediction of shear capacity in continuous members is proposed, based on the findings of the current study. The predicted design approach is compared with those of BS 8110 and Eurocode 2. Paul Keown, BEng, PhD, CEng, MICE Doran Consulting, Lisburn Road, Belfast David J. Cleland, BSc, PhD, CEng, FICE, FIStructE Queen’s University, Belfast BT7 1NN Stephen G. Gilbert, BSc, PhD, CEng, MICE, MIStructE Queen’s University, Belfast BT7 1NN David Sloan, BSc, CEng, MICE Queen’s University, Belfast BT7 1NN