Lambienze Plaza

LAmbienze Plaza was designed to be 16-storey building with 13 apartment levels topping 3
parking level. The plaza slab is designed with two offset rectangular towers that connected by
an elevator with post-tensioned concrete slabs and steel columns made up its structural frame.
The function of post tensioned concrete slab is to overcome the tensile weakness of concrete
slabs by placing high-strength steel wires type along their length before the concrete is
poured. Hydraulics jack then had been poured and anchor the wires, compressing the
concrete after the concrete had been hardened.
During construction of this building, this building are using lift slab method, where the slab
concreted on the ground on top of one another with bond breaker between them. These slabs
were lifted into temporary position by a hydraulic lifting apparatus and held in place by steel
wedges. In halfway construction to be completed, the slab fell onto the slab below it, which
was unable to support this added weight and fell in turn. The whole entire structure was
collapsed, first the west tower and then the east tower with the death of 28 workers.

There are several theories that leading collapse of the building. First, the building are having
overloaded steel angle. The failure occurred at the most heavily loaded column or the
adjacent column as a result of a lifting assembly failure. Second, the instability of the wedges
holding the 12th floorroof package caused the collapse. It found the abnormal tack welds on
the wedges that supported the 12th floorroof, a large deformation on the top edge of the
west wedge of this set. The investigation also found that the shear head gaps between
columns which is the gap were much larger than the gaps on the rest of the building. Third,
about the tendons improper design. The tendons in the east tower is two-way banded tendons

that are fulfilling the criteria in the post tensioning tendons layout. But in the other tower that
is the west tower are not followed all the criteria. Plus, the details of design of the posttensioned floor slabs do not show the location of the shear walls or the openings for the walls
onto columns. Fourth theories, OSHA was found that the header bar-to-channel welds on one
side of the 9th floor shear head at column had failed. The use of one-sided square groove
welds for the header bar-to-channel connection was criticized because they were not
prequalified joints because they were not prequalified joints because the amount of weld
penetration was not known, their strength could not be determined. This problem lead to the
poor weld details and Welds. The Fifth theory is about the instability of the overall structure
whereby the connection was known to be stiff to rotation forces when the concrete slabs are
resting of the wedges temporarily. However, what actually happen on the structure is as soon
the wedges are lifted it can rotate freely from the column and it became stable again when
fully welded at its final position. Lastly the sixth theory, its about the geotechnical material
where by it found disintegrated rock, bedrock, and fill materials of varying quality. However,
there with some unclear answers in the testing of in-place density was performed and they for
the assumption of the allowable bearing pressure