Case Study: Skidmore, Owings & Merrill achieves optimized, code‑compliant 17‑acre long‑span headhouse roof for Mumbai Airport with Altair S‑FRAME & S‑STEEL

Design and Expertise Under One Roof - SOM’s Mumbai Airport Design Masterpiece Soars with Altair Solutions

Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), a global architecture and engineering firm, was challenged to design a single headhouse roof for Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport that would span 17 acres (70,000 m2) without expansion joints, resist extreme monsoon conditions, accommodate thermal movement, and integrate a unidirectional cable wall system. To manage the complex geometry and demanding performance requirements, SOM turned to Altair tools—primarily Altair S-FRAME and Altair S-STEEL (with Altair HyperMesh and Altair OptiStruct for non‑standard connections).

Using Altair S-FRAME and S-STEEL, SOM modeled and analyzed the entire long-span roof and curtain wall (including a cable wall >1 km long and 11,000 m2 in area), performed nonlinear buckling studies on the composite mega-columns, and exported connection loads into HyperMesh/OptiStruct to optimize three‑dimensional connections. Altair’s solutions enabled code‑compliant designs, optimized steel use, confident results, and shortened design cycles—allowing SOM to deliver a 17‑acre roof supported by 30 mega‑columns while meeting tight timelines and structural performance targets.

Skidmore, Owings & Merrill

Preetam Biswas

Principal