Composite Decking and Suspended Flooring for Aircraft Hangars

The best place to locate these additional facilities is usually at the rear, landside of the aircraft hangar, as apron access is expensive and valuable, it is better not to waste it by building stores and lean-tos on this side.

Therefore if you are considering including additional space to house new facilities we would recommend constructing a lean-to along the whole of the rear of the hangar, with the ground floor housing the heavy stores and workshops and the upper floors housing lighter workshops such as trim and avionics, offices and viewing galleries.

Another point to consider is that by housing the trim workshops on the first floor at cabin door level it is possible to connect these workshops to the cabin by use of adjustable bridges.

Furthermore, if the aircraft hangar requires a nose-in operation, then the nose of the aircraft may well go into the lean-to, giving easy access to both the cabin doors and the nose cone, allowing access from either the trim or avionics workshops as required.

The building of a lean-to with more than one floor is beneficial structurally for the aircraft hangar; and makes it a lot easier to build. Making the first wide-span frame stand up neatly and squarely is always tricky; and having a solid base to start with makes it easier. The very tall rear gable columns are nicely fixed in space before the first frame is erected.

In service, the lean-to structure resists wind loads. The lean-to should always be steel framed and should always be rigidly fixed to the hangar itself, as the multitude of electric, plumbing, air, intranet as well as sheeting interconnections are easily disrupted by the inevitable differences in thermal and climatic deflections of the hangar and the lean-to, if the two are not strongly joined together.

So, how do REIDsteel make the suspended floors that are used within the lean-to structure?

Normally when constructing suspended flooring we use concrete decking, we start by pouring a thin concrete floor - perhaps 130mm thick, onto our "composite" decking. This galvanised steel decking has special deformations to lock the concrete onto the steel, making the two materials act together "compositely".

The galvanised decking acts as the tension reinforcement for the slab only light anti-crack mesh may be needed. The concrete can usually be poured (carefully) onto the steel with no propping. The slab is then supported on light beams (joists) which are firmly fixed into main beams supported on columns.

This system is ideal for all export jobs. It gives tremendous resilience and stiffness and is essential in earthquake and hurricane areas.

Alternatively, if available, precast hollow-cored concrete planks may be used on our grillage of steelwork, and then can be screeded to give a smooth floor.

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