Six Months in Copenhagen

Several cable television stations have recently discovered that engineering makes compelling television. Building Big, Modern Marvels, Extreme Engineering, and others have been highlighting the truly exciting challenges that civil engineers take on. A few months ago, I was surprised to receive an email from the producer of one such engineering program. He was looking for an American engineer, living in Europe, to contribute to a show about the world's tallest building, Taipei 101. I fit the bill.

After a brief description of the show's theme, the producer put the "million dollar" question to me: "How do we explain the design of this record breaking structure to non-engineers?" I had to admit that even I wasn't entirely sure how the building resisted typhoon winds and serious earthquakes. 

Luckily, the chief structural engineer of Taipei 101 worked for my American company and was eager to explain the design to me. He emphasized the importance of the building's outriggers, which widened the effective base of the building and also stiffened the structural core. To convey to the director what I had learned, I created my own Styrofoam model and filmed some short videos that I posted on YouTube.com.

A couple of weeks later, I received an enthusiastic phone call from the director's assistant. We were booked to sail the English Channel on something called a trimaran. It appeared that they took some comparisons between ships rigging, outriggers and Taipei 101's lateral system quite literally.

I learned that the trimaran concept pairs two pontoons with a separate central hull. The boat that we sailed was special because the pontoons were connected to the hull via outriggers that could swing out from the center to increase or reduce the width of the boat. This allowed the wide trimaran to remain stable when sailing, but then shrink to fit into a small slip or trailer.

When I arrived at the dock for filming, the boat, with outriggers retracted, was wedged into an impossibly small space. After a few takes that introduced the host and me to the ship, we headed for open water. Of course, the first step was to extend the outriggers. 

As the camera crew looked on from a separate boat, the director asked me to explain the similarities between the ship's outriggers and those on Taipei 101. My part was completely unscripted, so I was just hoping to get it right. The host, an experienced television personality in Britain, was really good at helping me stay on point. He seemed genuinely interested in my explanations of overturning, structural materials and stiffening.

Boring dialogue out of the way, the captain of our ship asked if it was time to do some yachting. It only took a few minutes to raise the sail, and we were off. In about 10 seconds we went from zero to 12 knots - entirely under wind power. It was amazing! We quickly passed a conventional sailboat heading back into the harbor. The captain turned to us and said, "Now I think the impressive thing to do would be to turn around (into the wind) and blow by that other boat again."

He casually instructed the rudder-man to turn the ship around while he prepared the sails. In one violent moment, the wind switched to hitting the opposite side of the sail and the lower cross-member swung wildly across the boat. A few adjustments later we were rapidly accelerating. The captain adjusted the sail tension for maximum power. The far outboard pontoon rose several feet out of the water as the center of gravity shifted away from the center; however, the opposite outrigger did its job and maintained our stability. Within moments we were topping 15 knots - into the wind!

We headed back to land with over three hours of video. Over lunch, the director explained that the day's entire adventure would only result in three to four minutes of show time. The rest of the lunch conversation was lively. Each person told great stories about the productions that they had been a part of. It was really a fun experience for me.

No one is quite certain when the show will air, but there is a lot of work still to be done. They will film for at least another month or two, and then go through up to three months of editing.  At best, the program will air in Fall 2008. Stay tuned for details on my red-carpet premiere.