Well it looks like even the lower bowl sections were elevated - as opposed to slab-on-grade.
So if there were cracks on the mid-plaza area per the photo I attached then that would suggest a structural design issue vs. soil movement (Texas has expansive clays).
Here is the description from the architect's website. It appears as if the concourse is elevated above grade.... but if the field is 15' below grade then where did the fill go? Depending on where the picture was taken an what happened to the cut material a portion of the concourse may be on fill? I will be interesting.
No specific knowledge, but suspect that the slab ("on ground") system is actually on carton form. Our soils here are expansive on the order of 6-9" PVR, but the true potential swell is more like unlimited. We are in the midst of a decade-long drought so odd things do happen when moisture moves in and out of deep soils, trees are removed, or buildings are built. I expect significantly more problems when the rains finally arrive.
Was that 60 with 6 zeros after it?? I think I just threw up a little bit in my mouth. Are there any $60M high school science and engineering facilities? I really believed I was beyond being shocked by anything these days.
70%+ overstress in some isolated instances. That's a lot of overstress. I wonder what led to there being such deficiencies. Almost seems like loading might have been off on the structure. Maybe someone selected the wrong live load and it just snowballed from there.
Here's the crack plan that they posted. It shows numerous areas where cracks are greater than 2"!
The photos I saw don't show cracks that wide.
The article mentions stirrups spaced too far apart. It will be interesting to read the report as I'm always curious about how engineers can get things wrong (lessons learned!).
