Dynamic Analysis of the BMW Tower in Munich

In the 1970s, world famous Austrian architect Karl Schwanzer designed an avant-garde suspended skyscraper for the new BMW headquarters. The BMW Tower was envisioned to resemble a four-cylinder motor and become a symbol for the recent flourishing success of BMW. Throughout its four decades, the BMW Tower has become the main architectural feature of modern Munich and a pride for one of the World leading car manufacturers. The structural design of the BMW Tower represented a major challenge to Germany's finest engineers because the suspended 99.5m-high structure had to whitstand not only static loading but large wind dynamic loading while having deflections within appropriate serviceability limits. Strand7 has been used to determine the stresses and deflections the structure is subjected to in order to analyse its behavior under static and dynamic loadings. Ultimately, this analysis helps to understand the nature of suspended structures in relation to the Eurocode building standards. Finally, thermal resistance has also been analysed using Strand7 to simulate a fire scenario and analyse the behaviour of the cable structure, which is the most critical building component.