Salt Lake City Airport (SLC)
The Salt Lake City Airport (SLC), a major hub of Delta Airlines, served as many as 26.8 million passengers a year before the pandemic. It was constructed 60 years ago, was made to handle half as many passengers and was not built to today's earthquake safety standards.
In 2014 the Airport Redevelopment Plan, a $4.1-billion replacement of the existing SLC Airport terminal, began. This included the building of a new 3.2-million-sq-ft terminal, five-level parking structure and central utility plant 300 acres south and west of the old airport.
WBA's in-house engineering team created custom expansion joint solutions, adjusting to this project's unique needs. We worked with contractor Specialty Systems Inc. (SSI) to install Wabo®QuakeWall, a high performance exterior/ interior wall expansion joint system. Also, within the new parking garage, the team installed Wabo®Seismic SafetyFlex, a comprehensive design choice based on its ability to accommodate multi-directional movement.
In March 2020, a few months after the expansion joints were installed, a 5.7-magnitude earthquake hit Salt Lake City, shutting down the airport. It was found out after that all of the joints survived the event without damage. a testament to their seismic capabilities.
