Project overview
This project is the DLS solar panel car parking shed in Amman, Jordan. Wrenze Steel carried out the structural modelling and design for the client, Ejhada Renewable Energy, with Dar Al Handasah as consultant.
The 3D view on this page shows the shed in its setting. Long canopies covered with solar panels stand on steel columns in the parking area beside a flat-roofed building, inside the site’s boundary wall.
Our scope
Our scope was structural modelling and design of the steel structure that carries the solar panels:
- setting the loads from the panels, their mounting rails and wind on the open canopy;
- analysing the frames and sizing the columns, beams and purlins;
- designing the connections and the column bases;
- building the structural model that ties the design to the site layout and parking bays.
Wrenze works on projects outside the UAE from its office in Dubai.
The structure
A solar car parking shed does two jobs. It shades the cars below, and it holds the panels at a steady angle to the sun. Both depend on a light steel frame that stays stiff enough to keep the panels flat and aligned.
Wind is the governing load. An open canopy has no walls, so wind can act on both its top and underside, pushing the roof down in one case and lifting it in another. Uplift often decides the size of the column bases and foundations, since the light frame has little weight to hold it down.
Column positions follow the parking layout. Columns usually sit between bays or at the ends, so cars can park and doors can open freely, and that layout sets the beam spans. Single columns with cantilevered beams leave the most clear space, but they put larger bending into the columns and bases.
Panel mounting also matters. The purlins must line up with the panel rails, and the frame needs to allow cable routes from the panels to the inverters.
See more canopy and solar projects, read about our structural steel design service, or request a quote for your solar carport.
