Aircraft Hangar Doors for Rizon Jet

Spec-Dor designed and managed the installation of aircraft hangar doors for Rizon Jet’s hangar at Doha International Airport in Qatar. Spec-Dor worked with architects and engineers, Dheya Towfiqi Engineering Consultancy Bureau based in Bahrain.  The installation was carried out by local contractor, Midmac Contracting Co.

Custom Hangar Door Design

Rizon Jet provides private luxury jet charter services to executives, VIPs, diplomats and government officials.   They required a luxurious and purpose-built VIP terminal at the Doha International Airport.

The hangar was designed with four hangar door openings arranged as two pairs on opposite sides of the building.  Each pair was 97.4m wide by 10.1m high.  No door pockets were designed into the building, so the doors had to be contained in the opening.  This required the custom hangar door design to use multi-directional hangar doors.

Multi-directional Hangar Doors

A multi-directional hangar door comprises several sections or blades that can each move independently.  For the Rizon Jet hangar, a minimum 50% opening was required, so Spec-Dor proposed a 2-blade solution.   As only two blades were required, only two sets of tracks and rails were needed keeping costs lower than if three or more blades were used.  However, the blades were considerably wider and heavier than a typical hangar door blade.

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Hangar door Safety

Each blade was 50m wide by 10m high, making them wider than a typical hangar door blade of around 10m width.   This increased width also meant that the blades were heavier than usual at around 15 metric tonnes.  This was the total weight of the steel structure and 7 tonnes of cladding. The increased weight meant that more powerful motors were designed to move the blades at a top speed of around 1ft/s.  An important factor in hangar door safety is the ability to be able to stop a blade moving in a short distance.  To achieve this, Spec-Dor consulted electronics experts to design a dual-braking system combining traditional disc brakes with a dynamic braking system that dissipates energy through a resistor bank.  The parameters of this dynamic braking system could be fine tuned on-site during installation, to achieve the desired deceleration.

Hangar Door Cladding

The luxury hangar is fully air-conditioned and outside temperatures at Doha are often around 40C. Hence, the hangar doors needed to be insulated.  The hangar door cladding comprised composite panels made of outer steel layers surrounding an insulating layer rated at R21.  This is the type of insulation often used in Canadian hangar doors but for the reverse purpose of keeping the heat in and the cold out!

Designing aircraft hangar doors for the luxury VIP terminal at Doha International  Airport challenged  Spec-Dor’s expertise.  But, with more than 32 years of hangar door manufacturing experience, Spec-Dor were able to deliver the best aircraft hangar door solution.