Failure of pillar of sports and entertainment hall structure

This paper deals with the failure of one of the sports and entertainment halls in Poland. The facility was built in the years 1977-85. Its main load-bearing members were three-hinged double-sloped frames with a total span of 45 m. The main girders of the frames were made of glued-laminated timber. The girders rest on reinforced concrete pillars. Because of the considerable expansion forces the facility was founded on concrete padstones. In the summer of 2016 one of the reinforced concrete pillars was found to have failed. It was established that the failure condition was mainly due to construction errors. A way of strengthening all the pillars with additional RC members was proposed