Optus stadium
Design development of the new Perth stadium
Western Australia

To improve the subgrade conditions and limit the likelihood of future movement, the site was pre-loaded to help remove the instantaneous settlement to reduce the risk of future settlements.

However, the stadium arena was still likely to be exposed to vertical ground movement over a long period of time, so the SPORTENG design for the natural turf playing surface allowed for the predicted ground movement. This included flexible subsurface infrastructure, limiting trenching, and building redundancies into the design to accommodate future settlement.

Drop-in wickets were identified early as the preferred design option for the cricket wickets for the main arena. SPORTENG worked with the head contractor and State representatives to develop a prototype drop-in wicket. Once established, the prototype was trialed over 5 days by the State cricket team and at the end of the trial the feedback and test results were positive, and the prototype design was endorsed.

The playing surface profile consists of a perched water table with a proprietary profile reinforcement product in the upper rootzone sand layer. The constructed turf surface is flat which is common for elite sport use. The use of the reinforced profile improves the load-bearing capacity of the Field of Play and also enables efficient turf replacement