HYATT REGENCY WALKWAYS COLLAPSE

Hyatt Regency Walkways Collapse

Hyatt Regency Walkways Collapse

Introduction

That the progress of engineering is associated with setbacks caused by failures is an assertion well documented throughout the history of human endeavor. In recent history, mechanical, transportation, and finally aerospace engineers have provided numerous proofs to this theorem. The problems introduced by powerful machinery developed in the steam age, and by the high pressure, high temperature boilers needed to propel them, challenged mechanical engineers. Innumerous workers lost their lives, and thousands of disabilities were caused in the period of refinement of the technology of pressure vessels and propelling and transmission systems. Eventually, an entirely new engineering discipline was developed to deal with the protective guarding of workers against moving and rotating machinery systems. The steam turbine, a key element of a majority of electrical power plants, required metallurgist and mechanical engineers to work in a joint effort to address the combination of high stresses and high temperature. However, even today, with all the spectacular advances in thermodynamics, finite-element analysis, fatigue and fracture mechanics, and metallurgy, a turbine failure is still the main threat to modern power plant operation. The 1981 Kansas City Hyatt walkway collapse did not happen as a result of innovative design, construction, or material use, but rather as a result of the accumulation of project management errors that together allowed a fatal construction detail flaw to be installed into the support system of the sky-bridges crossing the hotel atrium. Questions of what happened, how it could happen, and the lessons learned, are the subject of this and the accompanying contemporary papers (Gillum 2000; Luth 2000; Pfatteicher 2000). This tragic event has previously been discussed in numerous books and papers. Steven S. Ross, summary of journalistic reports and readers' correspondence (Ross 1984) provides good insight on the broad impact the collapse had on the professional community. Dov Kaminetzky's book views the collapse in terms of the errors in design/construction (Kaminetzky 1991). The summary of the Administrative Hearings on the case (Administrative 1984) emphasizes in great detail the lack of rigorous process checks in design and construction document production and approval and flow in the chain of command and responsibility in the system.

This paper emphasizes the engineering aspects of the failure and, in particular, the critical connection and the loading conditions.

The Structure

The era of elegant modern public structures in the late 1970s and 1980s was certainly well appreciated among Hyatt hotel owners and their architects. The 1981 newly opened Kansas City Hyatt Regency Hotel was a prime example. The functional block and the hotel tower were connected by a 26 m (87 ft) wide by 37 m (120 ft) long atrium. Dramatic effect was provided by a multi-story glass curtain wall enclosing one side of the atrium, and by three pedestrian walkways spanning it while suspended from the roof. Two of the three bridges were located above each other at the second and fourth floor; the third was offset and parallel to them at the third floor ...