This Heavy Ion Therapy Center is an endowment to the Taipei Veterans General Hospital by Dr. Samuel Yin, the founder of the Tang Prize, to establish a 2.7 billion US dollars facility that leverages heavy-ion radiotherapy equipment for oncology use, the first one in Taiwan.

The facility employs concrete barrier walls with a thickness of 6.5m and concrete slabs with a thickness of 2.3m to shield the radiation. The heat of hydration from the mass concrete makes the construction of the project extremely challenging.

To assure the quality of the concrete construction at this large scale, the construction processes and procedures were carefully designed by FEM analyses and simulations of temperature and stress during each construction step. Some special techniques were adopted to prevent thermal cracking, including specially selected combination of cementitious materials, initially iced concrete, arrangement of pre-set cracks, etc.

In addition, this project adopted the technique of decorative concrete for building facade to exhibit various surface textures, such as artistic cleavage and tree shadows. Special precast techniques were applied, including specially designed rubber molds, shrinkage controlled mix proportion of concrete, sophisticated curing process, etc. These unique building facades provide a sense of tranquility to the hospital that helps to sooth and heal.

The meticulous construction plan significantly shortened the overall project duration – from the initially estimated three years to only 15 months, the fastest completion among similar projects around the world, such as 20 months for Kyushu International HIBTC, 24 months for East Japan HIC, and 26 months for Osaka HITC. The efficiency and effectiveness is truly remarkable.