Strengthening for Blast Mitigation to Carpark Columns at Crowne Plaza Hotel at Terminal 3, Changi Airport

The Crowne Plaza Hotel is Singapore’s newest airport hotel at Terminal 3, Changi Airport. With its eco-friendly design and features like a huge stunning mesh screen of tropical orchid on the building exterior screen that shades 60 percent of the entire hotel, it was awarded the Building and Construction Authority’s Green Mark, which honors buildings that meet a benchmark of environmentally friendly features.

For this new airport hotel, there was a requirement for the basement carpark columns to be strengthened for additional building load due to deficient strength and also to provide protection against blast. A blast design was carried out by FYFE Asia (Fibrwrap Construction’s parent company), and it was determined that both the strengthening and blast mitigation can be provided by the TYFO^® Fibrwrap^® Composite Systems.

This approach of fully confining the columns is very much simpler and convenient compared to the destructive conventional steel plate jacketing or column enlargement process. The overall time required to complete the project was also reduced by half.