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Building Design Concept
Concordia Station consists of a core of three "winter" buildings flanked by a Summer Camp that also acts as emergency shelter. All structures are on or above ground. Two of three winter buildings are unique integral self-elevating buildings forming the station's main living and working areas. The third winter building is housing the main energy and mechanical services. The summer-emergency camp and all satellite installations are modular units set low to the ground on skids. These units can be towed away to avoid progressive burial by snow accumulation. Technical services are standard, reliable technologies in a simple, streamlined system. Only one of the three 180 kVA generator sets will be needed at any time. Engine heat is recovered with boilers satisfying additional heating requirements.
Each of the two self-elevating buildings is a roughly cylindrical body supported by six legs. Each leg is sitting on a large "footing" pad spreading the load over the snow. Each leg can move up and down relative to the body of the building via a hydraulic jack. A leg can be jacked up relative to the building and snow packed under its footing. Once all six legs have been subject to this operation the body of the building can be raised above the new ground surface by jacking the legs back down relative to the body. This allows the entire structure to leapfrog its way up over the ice as the ground level rises with snow accumulation.
The originality of this design is to make the entire structure upwardly mobile to preserve its integrity. The usual jack-up building design is based on the body of the building sliding upward along fixed legs. As snow accumulates and the ground level rises, an increasingly longer section of the legs is entrapped underground and subject to differential movements of the ice. This progressively ruins the foundations and ultimately deforms the legs to the point of preventing further jacking-up operations. The self-elevating design adopted for Concordia requires a heavier, sturdier structure to allow for the variations in structural loads during elevation operations but guarantees the log term integrity of the building structure.
Environmental protection and waste management
From its conception, the project has incorporated methods for reducing the environmental impact. It has tried to minimize as much as possible the risks of physical and chemical pollution, at least in accordance with SCAR, Antarctic Treaty and Madrid Protocol recommendations and regulations, with an additional emphasis on minimizing the impact on scientific observations:
- fuels and lubricants used will not contain heavy metals and will have low sulfur components;
- generators are equipped with particle filters and catalysts;
- exhaust gases will be condensed, which will trap sulfuric acids and water vapour;
- lubricant and other wastes will also be stored (without incineration), then repatriated.