THE OPPORTUNITY
The U.S. Army needed to deploy shelters in remote areas near Baghdad, Iraq in order to house and protect targeting facilities. Combinations of up to nine shelters were needed for each facility.
THE CHALLENGE
The shelters needed to be designed to be transported to the sites via a number of different transportation methods, including C-17 cargo planes. The shelters needed to be of standard size and of limited weight for shipping. The shelters also had to be designed to be relocated on very short notice. Further, the shelters had to be resistant to the high seismic activity in the areas of deployment. Other requirements of the shelters were the need to resist emergency decompression during air transport and resistance to electronic pulse.
THE PS&S SOLUTION
PS&S provided structural engineering services for a modular manufacturer.
To facilitate deployment, and future redeployment, standard ISO shipping containers were used as the basic structure of the shelter. The containers needed to be reinforced in order to be capable of resisting the severe seismic loading of the areas of deployment, and to be able to protect the sensitive equipment inside of the shelter. The containers were able to be stacked and arranged to accommodate various field configurations.
Finite element analysis and design software was utilized to perform the seismic analysis, and the transportation load analysis, including decompression. The containers, and internal equipment supports, were designed to resist up to 6g of acceleration. Seal welding and other protection methods were used to resist electronic pulse attack.