Projects
Government agency Washington

Protection of over 1,000 columns against car bombs

The parking garage of an office building belonging to a U.S. security agency needed to be protected against the potential threat of car bombs. To implement this, the project team relied on DUCON. The approximately 1,100 columns in the building’s basement were wrapped with this high-performance material over a height of about 1.50 m (5 ft) to reinforce the most vulnerable part of the column and maintain structural stability in the event of an attack.

The DUCON column wrapping is only 50 mm (2 in) thick. Strengthening with conventional reinforced concrete would have required more than double the component thickness to achieve the same performance. This would have meant that there would no longer have been enough space for the three parking spaces, each of which is located between two columns. Consequently, every third parking space would have been lost, and the parking garage would have suffered a significant reduction in capacity.

For the project, the raw materials were transported to the construction site in Washington and installed in collaboration with a local construction company. The system’s ease of installation ensured rapid progress, allowing the entire project to be completed on schedule.

Project data:

• Execution Period: 2015
• Column encasement with a component thickness of 50 mm (2 in)
• Approx. 1,100 reinforced columns