BURJ KHALIFA

231901004 PAVITHRAN.G
INTRODUCTION

Burj Khalifa is a 163 story skyscraper in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. The total height of
the building is 829.8 [m], with a podium development at its base, including a 4 – 6
story garage. With a total height of 829.8 [m] and a roof height (excluding antenna) of
828 [m], the Burj Khalifa has been the tallest structure and building in the world since
its topping out in late 2008. A series of comparisons is carried out to estimate the
analysis of its piled raft in the program ELPLA. Then the results of the other calculations
and measurements are compared with those of ELPLA analysis.

The Architects and Structural Engineers for the project were Skidmore Owings and
Merrill LLP (SOM) in Chicago. Hyder Consulting (UK) Ltd (HCL) were appointed
geotechnical consultant for the works by Emaar and carried out the design of the
foundation system and an independent peer review has been undertaken by Coffey
Geosciences (Coffey). This paper describes the foundation design and verification
processes, and the results of the pile load testing programs. It also compares the
predicted settlements with those measured during construction.

Shape of Burj Khalifa

It is design to resemble the Hymenocallis flower. Its floor plan seems like Y shape as
shown in the below figure.

BURJ KHALIFA FOUNDATION DETAILS

It has approximately 192-194 frictional piles. These are concrete piles having 1.5 m
diameter and depth more than 50 m. There is also a raft foundation of 15.25 m and
thickness is 3.75 m of slab having area 8,000 sqm.
Steps in foundation design of Burj Khalifa

• A desk study of the geology and hydrogeology of the site area.

• Site investigation (that may be phased) to assess site stratigraphy and
variability.
• In situ and laboratory testing to assess the behaviour and engineering properties
of key strata.
• The formulation of a geotechnical model for the site – in some cases a series of
models may be necessary if ground conditions are variable across the building
footprint.
• Preliminary assessment of foundation requirements, based on relatively simple
methods of analysis and design.
• Refinement of the design, based on more accurate representations of the
structural layout, applied loadings and the ground conditions. Close interaction
between the structural and geotechnical designers is essential from this point
onwards.
• During detailed design, as the foundation system is modified so too are the loads
computed by the structural designer and a compatible set of loads and
foundation deformations are developed through an iterative process.
• In situ foundation testing at or before this stage is essential such that the actual
foundation behavior is consistent with design assumptions. Usually prototype
piles are constructed and tested and if the tested behavior deviates from that
expected, the foundation design may need to be revised. This could result in
either an increase or decrease in foundation requirements.
• Monitoring of the building performance during and after construction is also
important –settlements around the foundation should be monitored as a
minimum, and load sharing between the raft and the piles would also be very
useful. Adopting an observational method allows for contingencies to be
implemented should the measured behavior depart significantly from the design
expectations.
Geotechnical conditions

• The ground conditions at the tower site comprise a horizontally stratified

subsurface profile that is complex and highly variable due to its depositional
history and the prevalent hot arid climatic conditions.
• Medium dense to very loose granular silty sands (Marine Deposits) are underlain
by successions of very weak to weak sandstone interbedded with very weakly
cemented sand, gypsi ferous fine grained sand stone/siltstone and weak to
moderately weak conglomerate/calcisiltite.
• Groundwater levels are generally high – approximately 2.5 m below ground
level.
• The geotechnical investigation for the site was completed in four phases – the
first phase included 23boreholes, 40 pressure meter tests and specialist
aboratory testing and the latter phases included additional boreholes, down-
hole, cross-hole and to mography geophysical surveys, installation of stand
pipes and further laboratory testing.
• Specialist laboratory tests were completed, including stress path triaxial,
resonant column, cyclic undrained triaxial, cyclic simple shear and constant
normal stiffness (CNS)direct shear tests.

Geotechnical models and analyses

A number of analyses were used to assess the response of the foundation for the Burj
Dubai Tower and Podium. The main design model was developed using a Finite
Element (FE) program ABAQUS run by a specialist company KW Ltd, based in the UK.
Other models were developed to validate and correlate the results from the ABAQUS
model using software programs comprising REPUTE (Geocentrix, 2002), PIGLET
(Randolph, 1996) and VDISP (OASYS Geo, 2001).

The ABAQUS model comprised a detailed foundation mesh of 500m by 500m by 90m
deep. The complete model incorporated a ‘far field’ coarse mesh of 1500m by 1500m
by 300m deep. A summary of the model set up is as follows:

Soil Strata: Modeled as Von Mises material (pressure independent), based on non-
linear stress-strain curves Tower Piles: Modeled as beam elements connected to the
soil strata by pile-soil interaction elements. Class A load-settlement predictions were
used to calibrate the elements;

Podium Piles: Beam elements fully bonded to the soil strata; Tower and Podium
Loadings: Applied as concentrated loadings at the column locations;
Tower raft submerged weight: Applied as a uniformly distributed load;

Computed Settlement Contours for Tower and Podium

Tower Shearing Action: Applied as a body load to the tower raft elements, in a
direction to coincide with the appropriate wind action assumed;
Building Stiffness Effect: Superstructure shear walls (not interrupted at door openings)
were modeled as a series of beam elements overlaid on the tower raft elements. The
moment of inertia was modified to simulate the stiffening effect of the tower, as
specified by SOM.
Analysis of the piled raft

Using the available data and results of the Burj Khalifa piled raft, which have been
discussed in details in the previous references, the nonlinear analyses of piled raft in
ELPLA are evaluated and verified using the following load-settlement relations of piles,
El Gendy et al. (2006) and El Gendy (2007):

1- Hyperbolic Function for Load-Settlement Curve. 2- Given Load-Settlement Curve.

The foundation system is analyzed as elastic piled raft. In which, the raft is considered
to be elastic plate supported on equal rigid piles.

A series of comparisons are carried out to evaluate the nonlinear analyses of piled raft
for load- settlement relations of piles. In which, results of other analytical solutions and
measurements are compared with those obtained by ELPLA.

FE-Net

The raft is divided into triangular elements with a maximum length of 2.0 [m] as shown
in Figure 7-3. Piles are divided into five elements with 9.49 [m] length.

Loads

Only long-term conditions have been considered, and for the majority of the early
analyses, an average load per pile of 23.21 [MN] has been used (this is representative
of the design dead plus live loading) and has been applied as a uniformly distributed
load on the tower raft of about 1250 [kPa].

Soil properties

The ground conditions comprise a horizontally stratified subsurface profile which is

complex and highly variable, due to the nature of deposition and the prevalent hot arid
climatic conditions. Medium dense to very loose granular silty sands (Marine Deposits)
are underlain by successions of very weak to weak sandstone interbedded with very
weakly cemented sand, gypsiferous fine grained sandstone/siltstone and weak to
moderately weak conglomerate/calcisiltite.

Groundwater levels are generally high across the site and excavations were likely to
encounter groundwater at approximately 2.5 [m] below ground level.
The drilling was carried out using cable percussion techniques with follow-on rotary
drilling methods to depths between 30 [m] and 140 [m] below ground level.

Earthquake resistance of Burj Khalifa

It is designed for a magnitude 7.0 earthquake, which is significantly stronger. We don’t

know how much extra capacity the building has, because what “withstand” means
varies from designer to designer and code to code. If the designers say it can
“withstand” a magnitude 7 earthquake, they mean that there’s no loss of structural
performance, then it would likely be able to take a magnitude 8 earthquake without
being heavily damaged, although it would be dicey. But if they were just designing the
building to preserve life safety in a magnitude 7 quake, then it definitely wouldn’t hold
up to a magnitude 8.