At 607m tall the The recently inaugurated Makkah clock tower in Mecca, Saudi Arabia is the second tallest in the world. The top 200m of the tower is clad with over 40,000m² of advanced FRP composite panels, including the largest clocks in the world.

The clocks measure in at 43m in diameter, with 23m long minute hands. The cladding of the tower top includes intricate calligraphy and ornamental patterning, finished in glass and ceramic tiles.  Illumination of the clock hands, clock faces and media wall, called for over two million LED’s to be integrated into the cladding panels.

Gurit worked closely with the tower top designers, SL-Rasch (Stuttgart, Germany), to carry out the structural engineering of the composite tower top cladding, clock hands, and the 23m diameter crescent, a self-supportive FRP composite structure which is located at the top of the building.  Gurit supplied a range of advanced composite materials, to Premier Composites Technologies (Dubai, UAE), the company that carried out fabrication and installation of the cladding, clock face, clock hands and crescent.  This included a new fire retardant wet laminating system from Gurit which was developed for lamination of the facade. 

Lamination was carried out on direct CNC cut moulds fabricated using Gurit’s T-Paste tooling paste on a polystyrene blank block.  The easy machining, low cure shrinkage and high level of detail achievable with T-Paste enabled rapid production of accurate direct moulds for the part production.

The clock hands presented a particular challenge due to their long slender geometry and the potential for high wind loading.  The clock hands were manufactured using a carbon fibre prepreg material and T-Foam structural core. Gurit originally developed the prepreg and the T-Foam for use in modern large wind turbine blades.  The excellent stiffness to weight ratio of the carbon prepreg combined with the mechanical properties, toughness and low resin uptake of structural core enabled the realisation of a lightweight, stiff clock hand.

Dr Mark Hobbs, Senior Engineer, Engineered Structures at Gurit comments,

This has been a fascinating project to work on.  It has presented numerous challenges, from the sheer scale and complexity of the project, to the integration of finishes and lighting into the cladding panels.  It has been a pleasure to work as part of the talented multinational design and production team to find ways to realise the vision of the client and architect using advanced FRP composite materials.

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Biography Gurit develops and manufactures advanced composite materials as well as composite process equipment and tools for the global Wind Energy, Tooling, Transportation, Marine and Engineered Structures markets. Gurit’s comprehensive product range comprises fibre reinforced glass and carbon prepregs, core materials, gelcoats, adhesives, resins and consumables, as well as key tooling equipment, such as production moulds and other certain finished parts. Gurit offers its customers a unique combination of a comprehensive materials offering together with unparalleled know-how in manufacturing, composite processing, structural design and tooling. Based on this expertise, Gurit holds significant market shares in its target industries and is recognised as a world-leading advanced composites materials and technologies specialist.