Commissioned by Highpoint Structures in France, Buitink Technology developed and produced a mega stretch tent for a show of Lacoste. The stretch tent consists of one unit and has a surface area of 1,100 m2. The space under the stretch tent is completely free spanned, as the tent is suspended from cams (and not supported by masts).

More information and photos of the project can be found on our website: Mega stretch tent for Lacoste.

Large forces due to wind load

At the points from which the flextent is suspended, large forces arise from wind loads. The cams/high points in the membrane must be able to absorb these. Buitink Technology developed a ridge detail that could absorb forces of up to 1500 kg and was therefore sufficient.

In order to apply this specific detail, it had to be extensively tested for strength and failure behavior. We set up a test for this purpose and then carried it out in-house with our tensile testing machine.

More information about our tensile testing facility can be found on our website: Pull and pressure bench 300kn.

Information, photos and videos of the test we conducted on the ridge details can be found below.

The ridge detail as applied for the mega hanging stretch tent for Lacoste

The ridge as tested in the tensile testing machine: adding straps ensured that the ridge detail would collapse during the test and not the fabric/membrane itself. In this way, we were able to determine the strength of the hanging ridge.

The ridge tensioned in our tensile bench: the ridge is tensioned in such a way that the practical situation when the ridge is loaded by wind is simulated as much as possible.

Sample test result