The Eiffel Tower in Paris was built more than 130 years ago. Originally, the tower was first planned to be built in Barcelona, Spain, but it was finally decided to build it in Paris in honor of the Paris World Exhibition planned for 1889, to mark the 100th anniversary of the French Revolution.
The idea for building the tower was conceived by Gustave Eiffel, who was an architect and engineer by profession, following his research on the use of superior steels for building bridges. Eiffel experienced a lot of frustration and a lot of opposition to the construction of the tower from statesmen and intellectuals who claimed that the planned tower would not fit in well with the Parisian style of construction, along with the fear that its construction would not be completed by the time the exhibition opened.
Even strong public opposition could not stand the modern project and the French government approved the construction and its budget.
Two years later, in 1889, Gustave Eiffel already climbed 1,665 steps to the third floor and hung the French flag on the mast of the tower. And as for the financial investment of the construction? Do not worry. This was covered within a year from the sale of tickets to the exhibition.
Thanks to Eiffel’s sophisticated construction technique, the tower rose to a height of 324 meters, the tallest tower in the world at the time. The Eiffel Tower held this record for a long time – until the construction of the Chrysler Building in New York in 1930. When the tower was first presented in the competition, it was not yet complete but still won it.
The debates about the tower continued in the French public, and in 1909 they almost started to dismantle it. Finally it was decided to use it as a military and government wireless station, and thanks to this the tower was saved. Eiffel was frustrated and resentful due to the arguments and criticism, and used to live and isolate himself in a room he built for himself at the end of the tower. Only later did the public understand the value of the tower, both as a communication facility and as a tourist site.
Three floors, two elevators
Since its establishment, many changes and improvements have been made. In 1900, another balcony was built on the second floor, about 20 meters above the first balcony. In 1957, during a renovation following a fire that broke out in the tower, the base for the antenna was prepared, thereby adding height to the tower. In 1983, the construction of a floor for the French television station was completed as well as a new elevator system. In 1986, the tower’s current lighting system was installed.
In March 2022, a new digital radio antenna was placed at the top of the tower, which added another 6 meters to its height.
The original construction of the Eiffel Tower was using different metals. In this way, a relatively light iron structure was created, which was built from trusses that give it great stability, even though its mass is relatively small. The tower is built from 18,038 wrought iron beams joined with approximately two and a half million rivets. 300 acrobatic plasterers were used to build it. The iron plates and materials were processed in the factories and brought to the construction site when they were ready for assembly. 7,300 tons of iron were used in the construction of the tower. The total weight of the tower is about 10,100 tons. The tower is painted every seven years, and the painting operation requires about 60 tons of paint.
The total height of the building is 330 meters (from the ground to the tip of the antenna at the top), and it has three main floors: first floor, at a height of 57 meters above the ground; second floor, at a height of 115 meters above the ground; and the third floor, at a height of 276 meters above the ground.
Inside the tower’s feet are large elevators that carry about sixty people each up to the second floor. On the second floor there is another, smaller elevator that goes up to the third floor. There are 1,665 steps in the building, which reach the third floor, but they are open to the public only up to the second floor, to which 1,120 steps lead.
On the first and second floors there are restaurants, shops and cafes, and on the top floor there is a fenced cell, from which you can observe the city and its surroundings. On a clear day you can expect a distance of about seventy kilometers. Another observation point is on the balcony next to the room where Gustave Eiffel lived, and is currently used as a museum where the furniture used by Eiffel is preserved. In the room, wax dolls of Eiffel and Thomas Alva Edison are displayed, recreating Edison’s visit to the building during its inauguration.
virtual twin
And here is something that with a different type of construction – might not have happened: apart from the normal vibrations resulting from the wind, which exist in all tall towers, the Eiffel Tower, which is made of metal, is exposed to a larger vibration factor. Since metal expands when it heats up, on clear days the sun causes the metal beams that are exposed directly to the light to expand to such an extent that the tower leans 16-18 centimeters away from it. After sunset the tower returns to its normal vertical position.
Not because of this fluctuation, and much because of the desire to develop a greener future, “Dassault Systems” company recreated the iconic French structure, to demonstrate how virtual worlds can promote the transformation of cities and infrastructure for a world with a much greener future.
The “Building Tomorrow” project, in which Dassault Systèmes experts from various industries, and using the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, designed and built a circular, low-carbon and renewable version of the tower, in a way that provides an answer to significant sustainability challenges such as accelerated urbanization, greenhouse gas emissions and energy consumption.
The purpose of the project is to show how authorities, engineers, architects, logistics experts and contractors can work together in new ways to create more circular work processes along the value chain, in a way that will create change in any project, of any size, and improve the quality of life.
The project team used the 3DEXERIENCE platform based on a design by the architect Nicolas Laisna, to create a virtual twin of the tower – a vertical garden with 18,038 trees (corresponding to the number of metal parts in the Eiffel Tower), 5500 square meters of gardens, 451 plants of different varieties and 200 collaborative experimental gardens .
Through the virtual twin that contains insights based on real-time data from all over the value chain, the Dassault Systèmes team shows that large infrastructure projects can be built in a greener way based on the joint planning of all those involved in the project, by optimizing the processes and resource management, low-carbon production of materials , green logistics and planning and the concept of construction as a production process of a product.
For example, the project team analyzed the consequences of various aspects, for example how the height of the new tower will affect the shade, air flow and temperature in the neighborhood, as well as created a model of the water consumption needed by the plants of the tower.
In the selection of the metals for the project, the supply sources, the transportation and the production processes of the material were optimized, without compromising on its quality and strength, thus the principles of industrial production were assimilated into the design and planning of the structure.
The industrial solution of Dassault Systèmes, Life Cycle Assessmentserved the team in making strategic decisions, and made it possible to rank aspects in each process, according to their environmental consequences, throughout the entire life cycle of the project, from the purchase of raw materials to the delivery of finished products.
The “Building Tomorrow” project, including a 2-meter high replica of the tower, was presented at the Dassault Systèmes booth at the Smart Cities Congress in Barcelona, November 2022.