UTSW Paul M. Bass Administrative and Clinical Center Implosion

Overview

Located on the campus of UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, the Paul M. Bass Administrative and Clinical Center complex comprised three towers on a 24-acre site. To satisfy future plans for growth, the University demolished the three buildings to make room for a new pediatric campus.

Our firm was consulted by Batson-Cook Construction, the general contractor for the demolition scope, to validate Controlled Demolition Inc.’s proposed plan for the implosion of the three towers. Our firm was also tasked to investigate whether the ground motion from the explosive felling posed any risks to adjacent structures and equipment located in buildings in the vicinity.

The three towers were safely and successfully demolished on October 01, 2023.

This animation was generated by capturing snapshots at 25 frames per second from the predictive analysis of the explosive felling. The buildings and the surrounding topography are rendered in a graphics software package, and the engineering simulation is embedded into the rendered graphics to provide a realistic scenario of the collapse to owners and stakeholders.

Highlights

• Our engineers developed high-fidelity models of the three towers and incorporated the plan specifying the location of the explosive charges and time delays.
• A progressive collapse analysis of the three towers was performed to validate the plan. The analysis concluded that the towers would collapse in a controlled manner, and the resulting debris would not pose any risk to adjacent structures.
• We also performed a ground vibration analysis using the impact forces recorded from the implosion analysis. The analysis concluded that the ground vibrations would not pose any risk to the adjacent structures or a telescope in one of the buildings nearby.