Legendary football matches, major concerts, and a panoramic view all the way to the Alps: Munich's Olympic Stadium has been offering unforgettable moments for decades. It combines architecture and emotions – attracting visitors from around the world. Now new, small, inconspicuous helpers are part of it: screws in the roof structure that digitally monitor their own safety.
Since the 1972 Olympic Games, the stadium has shaped the cityscape of Munich. An eye-catcher is the world-famous tent roof – a delicate steel structure covering around 78,000 square meters of the stadium area and about half of the stadium. At an airy height up to 50 meters above the playing field, visitors can walk on catwalks across the roof – with views over Munich, down to the playing field, and on clear days all the way to the Alps. For adrenaline fans, there is also the “Flying Fox,” an approximately 200-meter-long zipline that crosses the stadium turf at a height of about 35 meters.
With all these attractions, safety is the top priority. Therefore, Stadtwerke München has supplemented the existing fasteners of the visitor platform integrated into the roof with so-called SensorBolts from the company fischer. These high-strength screws are equipped with sensors that continuously measure how strongly the components hold together and which temperatures and environmental influences they are exposed to. The data is automatically transmitted to a central system and can be accessed anytime and anywhere on smartphones as well as PCs.
What used to be possible only with regular inspections and high effort can now be handled permanently and digitally.
“What was previously only possible with regular inspections and high effort can now be handled permanently and digitally,” says Martin Neumann, Head of Connected Products at the fischer Group. “Operators learn in real-time whether everything is safe – without elaborate on-site inspections. This allows maintenance and servicing to be planned more precisely, downtime to be reduced, costs to be lowered, safety standards to be further increased, and the service life of buildings and installations to be extended.”
In addition to screws, other fasteners with sensors are also part of the offering. The Olympic Stadium is just one of several projects. The technology is already used in leisure attractions, such as the “blue fire Megacoaster” in Europa-Park, in offshore wind farms, as well as many other buildings and installations.
