SIMONA^® Twin-Wall Sheets -light, sturdy, durable

Initial situation

In 2015, IN-Campus GmbH, a joint venture between AUDI AG and the City of Ingolstadt, acquired 75 hectares of land that had previously belonged to the former Bayernoil oil refinery in the south-east of Ingolstadt. This is the site of incampus, a high-tech park for innovative technology projects in the automotive sector. The construction of incampus was preceded by one of the largest soil remediation projects in Germany. The soil and groundwater had to be cleaned up by removing hundreds of tonnes of heavy oil, petrol and carcinogenic chemicals. However, incampus is setting standards not only in terms of future-oriented mobility and environmentally friendly remediation. At present, the buildings are still being supplied with electricity and district heating from external sources. In the medium term, however, the aim is to achieve a zero-energy campus that uses self-generated and regenerative forms of energy.

Task

To come a step closer to this vision, a so-called LowEx network (i.e. a low-exergy network) is being installed. Buildings with a high cooling load (e.g. the computer centre) emit waste heat into the network. Thus, buildings with a high heating load have the required energy available from the LowEx network. Based on this concept, consumers become producers. For this purpose, it is necessary to have a water-based piping network with hot and cold water tanks serving all the buildings on the incampus as a heat source and heat sink. To meet the requirements of the tender for construction of the two 50 m³ tanks, the company carrying out the work, Hopfgartner Kunststoff- & Umwelttechnik GmbH, was looking for cross-ribbed Twin-Wall Sheets made of PE 100 with a module size of 50 x 50 mm. The individual components had to be planned by Hopfgartner in such a way that it would be possible to place them in the building and assemble them by on-site welding.

Solution

Hopfgartner decided in favour of cross-ribbed SIMONA® Twin-Wall Sheets made of PE 100 black, which, in addition to their design-specific benefits, also proved to be a convincing option because of the corrosion resistance, media resistance, durability and recyclability of the material. Owing to the cross-ribbed internal structure of the Twin-Wall Sheets, a high level of direction-independent rigidity is achieved, despite a wall thickness of only 40 mm. The additional reinforcement with a bolted steel frame made of galvanised steel IPE sections provides the basis for a sturdy and long-lasting tank design without any temperature-related linear expansion. Moreover, on account of the cavities, the sheets have good thermal insulation properties and by comparison with solid material they are lighter, as a result of which transport and on-site delivery of the prefabricated components with dimensions of up to a total length of 7,000 mm and a total width of 2,800 mm proved to be particularly efficient, without the need for any special haulage operations. Inside the incampus energy centre the individual components were then assembled on the spot in the proper manner by means of heated-tool butt welding and hot-gas extrusion welding.