Dome over the Gdynia seaport building

The paper presents the description of structure and the selected problems of the technical condition, as well as the strength analysis of the thin-walled reinforced concrete shell which has been making a covering of the main hall of the Gdynia Seaport Building through the last 80 years. The rectangle projection of four single curvature shells of the dome was shaped out of mutual perpendicular intersection of two cylindrical shells. The analysis of the state of stress and deformations was carried out using the special model worked out in MES considering the combination of loads, the thermal ones included. For the long lasting loads (the deadweight of the dome), the computed results of static quantities were confronted with analytical results obtained according to F. Dischinger’s method. This method had been applied by the DYWIDAG Company in Berlin and its branch in Katowice (Poland) who designed the Gdynia Dome. The computational analysis and the assessment of the technical state, along with laboratory pH tests of concrete, made it possible to carry out the overall evaluation of durability and safety of operation of the Gdynia Seaport Dome through the next decades.