Stainless Steel Punching Shear Solution For Royal Liverpool Hospital MRI Rooms
28 September 2023The newly opened state-of-art Royal Liverpool University Hospital is a major teaching and research hospital and the biggest of its kind in the UK. Construction of the New Royal started in 2013 and was originally scheduled to open in 2017 but various engineering concerns and the collapse of the original contractor Carillion in 2018 led to the hospital finally opening several years later in October of 2022 at an overall cost estimated to be around £750 million.
Brooks Forgings and their punching shear reinforcement division Linkstud PSR were asked to produce punching shear components in 316 stainless steel (non-ferrous) to support specific aspects of the project during its construction.
Punching shear rails are primarily used in flat slab, piled slab, and post-tensioned construction and are commonly manufactured from magnetic (ferrous) materials. In the case of the New Royal, several confined rooms were planned to house new Magnetom Aera and Sola MRI machines supplied by Siemens.
When MRI machines are in operation they employ extremely powerful magnets that produce a large and strong magnetic field. Traditional structural steelwork if in close proximity can interfere with the sensitive machinery and potentially blur the critical images generated for patient analysis.
Engineers for the New Royal project were able to isolate specific rooms and sections of the structural works by utilising a stainless steel non-magnetic solution manufactured by Brooks Forgings and Linkstud PSR.