Indianapolis International Airport Concourses

When Indianapolis unveiled its new $1.1B Midfield Terminal and Concourses, Hillsdale Fabricators was looked to by the project’s prime steel contractor, Cives Steel Company, to fabricate the serpentine structural roof trusses and tapered-pipe columns. The roof trusses are 10 feet deep with a wide-flange top chord 6G welded to diagonal and vertical pipe that is welded to a 16 inch diameter bottom chord. Many of the trusses were 115 feet long and shipped complete from our facility in St. Louis, Missouri. The tapered “torpedo” columns were fabricated from standard 24 inch diameter pipe with 8-foot conical sections at both ends. The conical sections, 24 inches tapered to 13 inches at the narrow end, were fabricated from one and a half inch thick plate. Adding to the fabrication challenge, all of the roof structure columns remain exposed classifying them as AESS (Architecturally Exposed Structural Steel) thus decreasing the allowable tolerance for imperfections.