I was talking to a few of you guys at Denver about the stadium and some of the construction/inspections of the stadium. Just thought I would post this info. I thought it was really interesting.
At the Building Officials Association of Texas last February the contract inspector gave a presentation about some of the statistics on the stadium. I would like to share a few of those that I can remember.
One thing that stood out was when they removed the temporary supports under the arches is that the arches settled three feet from where they were temporarily held in place. The inspector stated the whole place was creaking and popping.
From what I remember also the entire roof is held up by only 4 points. Those locations are made to swivel and move laterally with the movement of the earth. The concrete beams supporting these pivot points...trying to recall....Each of the box abutments is 18 feet wide by 140 feet long and 71 feet deep of tightly webbed steel and concrete.....with just ONE pivot point...there were four of these.
Somewhere around 160 HDTV's (I think) in the stadium so that any place you may be in the stadium there is a TV.
The HDTV in the center that spans from the 20 yard line to the 20 yard line was classified as a building and was required to have two exits. They originally exit/lifting lowering platform for one of the exits had one of the exits 36" X 36" but then they decided that in case of and emergency....FD...that they couldn't get a gurney (sp) to fit within the lift so they required the lifting/lowering platform to be a size that would accommodate the gurney and two paramedics.
To put the HDTV in perspective imagine four city buses parked in a line. Now imagine another layer of buses stacked on top of them. Add five more layers and hang the 28-bus cluster over a mental football field.
Facing the end zones at each end of the giant displays are two smaller video boards. Those are 51 feet wide and 29 feet high.
The structure, including all four video screens, weighs 600 tons. Three-inch diameter steel cables connected to the video boards and steel box trusses hold the structure in place.
Architecture Fact Sheet
Site:
• The Cowboys Stadium site covers 73 total acres; the overall site encompasses 140 total acres
• The stadium is 3 million square feet containing 104 cubic feet of volume
• Stadium length – 900 feet from one end zone retractable wall to the opposite end zone
retractable wall
Exterior Façade:
• Canted 800-foot glass wall exterior
− slopes at 14-degree angle
− 86-foot-high glazing (glass) system
• Lens (clerestory)
− 33 feet at highest point with overall length of 904 feet
• Arches soar 292 feet above playing field
− Each boxed arch is 17 feet wide and 35 feet deep
− Each arch weighs 3,255 tons
− Each arch spans quarter-mile in length
−Top of steel at the highpoint of the main arched trusses is 292 feet above the playing
field.
• Retractable end zone doors
− The 180-foot-wide by 120-foot-high operable glass doors, located at each end of the
stadium, are the largest operable glass doors in the world
− Five 38-foot panels take 18 minutes to open or close
• Roof and Roof Structure
− At 660,800 square feet, the stadium’s roof is one of the largest domed sports
structures in the world
− Soaring 292 feet above the playing field, the two monumental arches support the
retractable roof – the world’s longest single-span roof structure
− Encompasses 104 million cubic feet of volume
− Opening 410 feet long by 256 feet wide encompassing 105,000 square feet
− Each panel weighs 1.68 million pounds
− The travel distance of each panel is 215 feet
− Consists of 14,100 tons of structural steel (which is equivalent to the weight of 92
Boeing 777s)
−Opens or closes in 12 minutes
−Materials:
− non-operable pieces - steel with PVC membrane
− operable pieces – Teflon coated fiberglass fabric
− The arch truss is fabricated from special high-strength grade 65 steel imported from
Luxembourg
− The structural steel’s wide flange sizes are up to W14x730 (14 inches in depth and
730 lbs. per foot)- the heaviest shape rolled in the world
− Number of bolts in arch spans: 50,000
− Total length of welding in arch spans: 165,000 feet
− Gallons of primer paint: 2,000
− Gallons of finish paint: 2,000
− The final keystone piece of the arch truss planar section is 56 feet long and weighs
110,000 pounds
Center-Hung Video Board Fact Sheet• Produced by Mitsubishi Electric Diamond Vision™, each of the four sides of the
center-hung LED display is the world’s largest: 72’ high by 160’ wide equaling
11,520 square feet per side or 23,040 square feet of sideline displays. It would
take 4,920 52” flat panel TVs to equal the size.
• Each side consists of the first true 1080 HD display in an NFL stadium- 1080 true
pixels in height at 20mm spacing and capable of displaying HDTV at 1920 x 1080
[16:9] resolution.
• Each display contains over 10.5 million Light Emitting Diodes’ (LED’s) using
Mitsubishi’s 10mm quad pixel pattern technology. The LED’s are contained
within 5,168 individual lighting units or panels per side or 10,336 total. The video
board uses 30 million light bulbs.
• The video board weighs 1.2 million pounds and the video screens span 25,670
square feet. The overall weight of the video board structure is more than 3.5
percent of the total roof weight.
• To hold the video board in place, a 72-foot tall steel structure was created that
contains a 10-level network of catwalks. Three-inch diameter steel cables grip
each end of the video board and are tethered to the stadium’s large steel box truss
arches. The center-hung structure is also designed to support a 90,000 pound
basketball arena style scoreboard hung from below when needed for other
events.
• The only access to the video board is via one of two motorized platforms. The
motorized platforms stop at Levels 1 through 9. Level 10 is the top of the
scoreboard and holds the backlit Cowboys star. These platforms move at a rate
of 30 feet per minute. They are operated from the field when there is nobody in
the board. They are also operable from within the cages themselves when
getting down from the board.
• Mitsubishi Diamond Vision™ also supplied four, 280 square-foot screens on the
lower concourse; an upper level fascia (ribbon) display measuring four feet high
by nearly 2,000 linear feet; and two Dallas Cowboys Ring of Honor displays
totaling more than 2,900 square feet. In addition, Mitsubishi provided a fully
integrated scoring system, content management and playback system, game
timers, delay of game clocks, locker room clocks and ticket window displays.
At the Building Officials Association of Texas last February the contract inspector gave a presentation about some of the statistics on the stadium. I would like to share a few of those that I can remember.
One thing that stood out was when they removed the temporary supports under the arches is that the arches settled three feet from where they were temporarily held in place. The inspector stated the whole place was creaking and popping.
From what I remember also the entire roof is held up by only 4 points. Those locations are made to swivel and move laterally with the movement of the earth. The concrete beams supporting these pivot points...trying to recall....Each of the box abutments is 18 feet wide by 140 feet long and 71 feet deep of tightly webbed steel and concrete.....with just ONE pivot point...there were four of these.
Somewhere around 160 HDTV's (I think) in the stadium so that any place you may be in the stadium there is a TV.
The HDTV in the center that spans from the 20 yard line to the 20 yard line was classified as a building and was required to have two exits. They originally exit/lifting lowering platform for one of the exits had one of the exits 36" X 36" but then they decided that in case of and emergency....FD...that they couldn't get a gurney (sp) to fit within the lift so they required the lifting/lowering platform to be a size that would accommodate the gurney and two paramedics.
To put the HDTV in perspective imagine four city buses parked in a line. Now imagine another layer of buses stacked on top of them. Add five more layers and hang the 28-bus cluster over a mental football field.
Facing the end zones at each end of the giant displays are two smaller video boards. Those are 51 feet wide and 29 feet high.
The structure, including all four video screens, weighs 600 tons. Three-inch diameter steel cables connected to the video boards and steel box trusses hold the structure in place.
Architecture Fact Sheet
Site:
• The Cowboys Stadium site covers 73 total acres; the overall site encompasses 140 total acres
• The stadium is 3 million square feet containing 104 cubic feet of volume
• Stadium length – 900 feet from one end zone retractable wall to the opposite end zone
retractable wall
Exterior Façade:
• Canted 800-foot glass wall exterior
− slopes at 14-degree angle
− 86-foot-high glazing (glass) system
• Lens (clerestory)
− 33 feet at highest point with overall length of 904 feet
• Arches soar 292 feet above playing field
− Each boxed arch is 17 feet wide and 35 feet deep
− Each arch weighs 3,255 tons
− Each arch spans quarter-mile in length
−Top of steel at the highpoint of the main arched trusses is 292 feet above the playing
field.
• Retractable end zone doors
− The 180-foot-wide by 120-foot-high operable glass doors, located at each end of the
stadium, are the largest operable glass doors in the world
− Five 38-foot panels take 18 minutes to open or close
• Roof and Roof Structure
− At 660,800 square feet, the stadium’s roof is one of the largest domed sports
structures in the world
− Soaring 292 feet above the playing field, the two monumental arches support the
retractable roof – the world’s longest single-span roof structure
− Encompasses 104 million cubic feet of volume
− Opening 410 feet long by 256 feet wide encompassing 105,000 square feet
− Each panel weighs 1.68 million pounds
− The travel distance of each panel is 215 feet
− Consists of 14,100 tons of structural steel (which is equivalent to the weight of 92
Boeing 777s)
−Opens or closes in 12 minutes
−Materials:
− non-operable pieces - steel with PVC membrane
− operable pieces – Teflon coated fiberglass fabric
− The arch truss is fabricated from special high-strength grade 65 steel imported from
Luxembourg
− The structural steel’s wide flange sizes are up to W14x730 (14 inches in depth and
730 lbs. per foot)- the heaviest shape rolled in the world
− Number of bolts in arch spans: 50,000
− Total length of welding in arch spans: 165,000 feet
− Gallons of primer paint: 2,000
− Gallons of finish paint: 2,000
− The final keystone piece of the arch truss planar section is 56 feet long and weighs
110,000 pounds
Center-Hung Video Board Fact Sheet• Produced by Mitsubishi Electric Diamond Vision™, each of the four sides of the
center-hung LED display is the world’s largest: 72’ high by 160’ wide equaling
11,520 square feet per side or 23,040 square feet of sideline displays. It would
take 4,920 52” flat panel TVs to equal the size.
• Each side consists of the first true 1080 HD display in an NFL stadium- 1080 true
pixels in height at 20mm spacing and capable of displaying HDTV at 1920 x 1080
[16:9] resolution.
• Each display contains over 10.5 million Light Emitting Diodes’ (LED’s) using
Mitsubishi’s 10mm quad pixel pattern technology. The LED’s are contained
within 5,168 individual lighting units or panels per side or 10,336 total. The video
board uses 30 million light bulbs.
• The video board weighs 1.2 million pounds and the video screens span 25,670
square feet. The overall weight of the video board structure is more than 3.5
percent of the total roof weight.
• To hold the video board in place, a 72-foot tall steel structure was created that
contains a 10-level network of catwalks. Three-inch diameter steel cables grip
each end of the video board and are tethered to the stadium’s large steel box truss
arches. The center-hung structure is also designed to support a 90,000 pound
basketball arena style scoreboard hung from below when needed for other
events.
• The only access to the video board is via one of two motorized platforms. The
motorized platforms stop at Levels 1 through 9. Level 10 is the top of the
scoreboard and holds the backlit Cowboys star. These platforms move at a rate
of 30 feet per minute. They are operated from the field when there is nobody in
the board. They are also operable from within the cages themselves when
getting down from the board.
• Mitsubishi Diamond Vision™ also supplied four, 280 square-foot screens on the
lower concourse; an upper level fascia (ribbon) display measuring four feet high
by nearly 2,000 linear feet; and two Dallas Cowboys Ring of Honor displays
totaling more than 2,900 square feet. In addition, Mitsubishi provided a fully
integrated scoring system, content management and playback system, game
timers, delay of game clocks, locker room clocks and ticket window displays.
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