Assessment of geological and geotechnical conditions for rebuilding Avala’s television tower

摘要

The paper presents the geotechnical conditions for the rebuilding of Avala’s television tower near Belgrade, the capital of Serbia, which was destroyed due to brutal NATO bombing in1999. The total height of the tower is 204.33 m, i.e. 136.65 m is the height of the reinforced concrete construction and 67.68 m is the height of steel structure. The fundamental condition for the rebuilding was that the shape and dimensions of the new tower and its location have to be the same as for the old one. But the old tower has been constructed half a century ago, according to the standards which were valid at that time, and the new tower has to be designed according to the present building codes which are more complex than the old ones. In order to satisfy that condition, it was necessary to perform extensive geotechnical investigations. Following the obtained results, consolidation grouting has been performed, as a measure for the improvement of physical-mechanical properties of the rock mass in the foundation zone. On this basis, a shallow pad foundation, with three reinforced concrete footings, was assumed as quite satisfactory.