Blast screens for Heathrow Airport

Citation

(2000), "Blast screens for Heathrow Airport", Aircraft Engineering and Aerospace Technology, Vol. 72 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/aeat.2000.12772aaf.011

Blast screens for Heathrow Airport

Keywords Buro Happold, Screens, Exhaust fumes, Aircraft

Buro Happold has designed a new vertical blast screen, which claims to use less of the valuable airside space than the traditional raked blast screens, but still protects airport buildings from aeroplane exhaust fumes.

Heathrow Airport's traditional raking and baffled blast screens took up a 2.9m wide strip of valuable airside land that could otherwise be put to more productive use. Creating additional airside space was a crucial requirement for the expansion of the Shelterspan transfer baggage handling facility at Terminal 3, Heathrow. The new screens were commissioned by BAA on the instigation of Keith Owen (senior project manager, baggage) and Jim Boden (baggage construction integrator).

Buro Happold associate, Hugh Wildy designed a new vertical solid blast screen which requires a footprint that is just 0.6m wide. The vertical screen is a structural steel frame 3.3m high, bolted directly onto the existing apron concrete. Profiled cladding is fixed on both sides of the frame, and the structure has a continuous in situ concrete plinth for protection and to assist in the resistance of overturning loads.

Adoption of the new blast screen released a strip of land 2.3m wide x 150m long. This enabled the airside road and parking adjacent to the transfer baggage building to be moved, in turn releasing that land for the required development.

In order to explore any environmental impact that could have arisen from altering the blast screen, Nigel Hiorns of Buro Happold used class-leading computational fluid dynamics (CFD) capability, based on the latest SGI ORIGIN 4-processor workstation combined with a parallel version of AEA Technology's CFX software. The relative performance of both the new vertical screen and traditional raking blast screens in protecting the airside buildings from aeroplane exhausts was modelled. The analysis demonstrated the satisfactory performance of the new vertical wall; the jet exhaust plume is deflected upwards and mixed by the action of the screen, ensuring that no harmful exhaust falls on the airside buildings.

Details available from: Buro Happold. Tel: +44 (0)1225 320600; Fax: +44 (0)1225 320601.