What is meant by Seismic Design

Philosophy?
• Severity of ground shaking at a given location during an
earthquake can be minor, moderate and strong.
• Relatively speaking, minor shaking occurs frequently, moderate
shaking occasionally and strong shaking rarely. For instance, on
average annually about 800 earthquakes of magnitude 5.0-5.9
occur in the world while the number is only about 18 for
magnitude range 7.0-7.9. So, should we design and construct a
building to resist that rare earthquake shaking that may come
only once in 500 years or even once in 2000 years at the chosen
project site, even though the life of the building itself may be
only 50 or 100 years.
 Contin.....
•Since it costs money to provide additional earthquake safety in
buildings, a conflict arises: Should we do away with the design of
buildings for earthquake effects? Or should we design the buildings to
be “earthquake proof” wherein there is no damage during the strong
but rare earthquake shaking? Clearly, the former approach can lead
to a major disaster, and the second approach is too expensive. Hence,
the design philosophy should lie somewhere in between these two
extremes.
 Earthquake Design Philosophy
The earthquake design philosophy may be summarized as follows:
1. Under minor but frequent shaking, the main members of the
building that carry vertical and horizontal forces should not be
damaged; however building parts that do not carry load may
sustain repairable damage.
2. Under moderate but occasional shaking, the main members
may sustain repairable damage, while the other parts of the
building may be damaged such that they may even have to be
replaced after the earthquake.
3. Under strong but rare shaking, the main members may sustain
severe (even irreparable) damage, but the building should not
collapse.
 Contin....
Thus, after minor shaking, the building will be fully operational
within a short time and the repair costs will be small. And, after
moderate shaking, the building will be operational once the repair
and strengthening of the damaged main members is
completed. But, after a strong earthquake, the building may
become dysfunctional for further use, but will stand so that people
can be evacuated and property recovered.
•Key Strategy : Ductile Elements at key locations (load resisting
locations) of the structure, protects non-ductile elements from
getting over stressed. This inelastic response, tends to increase the
effective period of the structure, resulting in reduction in the
strength demand, to deal with wind and earthquake forces, as
most of the earthquake forces go in overcoming the damped
structure due to inelastic response.
DUCTILITY
•Main elements of Earthquake Resistant Building should be designed
with property called Ductility Example : Chalk on Breaking : gives a
brittle Failure While, Steel Pins on applying force : gives a ductile
failure, i.e. it bends
•Beams should be designed for such kind of ductility
•Ductility enables structures, which do not have adequate elastic
strength to survive ground motions, through its inelastic response,
i.e. ability of the structure to deform plastically without fracture.
Factors (ductility)
a.Architectural Plan : Vertically and Horizontally symmetrical plan,
improves ductility .
b.Soft Storey : Soft storeys reduce the overall ductility of the
structure and should be avoided, specially in the mid span of the
vertical cantilever (tower) .
c.Weak Storey : Aviod Weak Storey and provide strong diaphragm
d.Door Openings : To be provided at atleast 0.6m away from the
column edges.
e.Location of Water tanks : Follow codal provisions, for
determining water tank location and swimming pool as it may
affect the location of the center of mass and the shear center
Increase ductility.
 Increase ductility
a.Increase transverse shear reinforcement
b.Increase compressive strength of concrete
c.Increase percentage of compression steel
d.Increase percentage of tension steel
 Shear walls
•Provide large strength and stiffness to the structure
in the direction of their orientation, preventing it
from lateral sways during earthquakes, as they are
good transmitters of earthquake lateral forces that
come along the direction of their orientation.
•It carries seismic loads down to the botton of
foundation.
•Thickness generally varies from 150mm to 400mm in
high rise buildings.
 Location of shear wall
•Shear walls should be provided along both directions. Door
and window openings, may be provided in shear walls but
their openings should be limited so that they offer least
interruption to shear wall.
•Shear walls must be symmetrically located to avoid ill
effects of torsion and twists. Hence, shear walls are more
effective, when they are location in the exterior perimeters of
the building and their unsymmetrical location should be
avoided.
•Shear walls are easy to construct as detailing is pretty
straight forward.
Role of shear wall
Seismic behaviour of shear wall
 CASE STUDY:SHANGHAI TOWER
Location Lujiazui Finance and Trade Zone, Pudong,
Shanghai, China
Area 30,370 square meters
Architectural composition： Main tower + podium
Main Tower： Height: 632 meters
Floors structural height: 580 meters 125
floors, 121 usable floors
Area: Approximately 576,000 square meters
(410,000 square meters above ground,
166,000 square meters underground)
Function: Office, hotels, recreation,
sightseeing, retail and cultural spaces

Podium: Height: 38 meters Floor: 5 Floors

Area: Approximately 60,100 square meters
Function: boutique retail, catering, hotel
entrance. Retail, parking lot, service and
electromechanically facilities are available
in the basement area.
 INTRODUCTION
•At completion, Shanghai Tower will have 121 occupied floors, 4.09
million square feet (380,000 sq. m) of area above grade and 1.52
million square feet (141,000 sq. m) of area below grade, and 106
elevators.
•With nine zones, each comprising 12 to 15 stories and dedicated to
retail, office, hotel, and observation/cultural facility uses, Shanghai
Tower will be a self-contained city. The circular building is wrapped in
a second, exterior skin, which spirals around it in a series of
triangular shapes. The angles of these triangles afford 21 public
atriums, each 12 to 14 stories high.
• With a direct tie into a subway stop, the building has a transit
oriented design.
•The dual-skin feature of the structure is important aesthetically,
environmentally, and financially. The exterior skin tapers and twists
as it goes up the core, extending out into space at points.
•The outer skin sort of acts like a coat; it tempers that space.”
Warm air will be drawn from the occupied spaces into the
atrium, where a chimney effect allows the heat to escape.
•The aerodynamics of the spiral shape sharply reduce the
wind load on the building, allowing designers to use about
one-third less structural steel than in a conventional building.
• A 120-degree twist was adopted for the building exterior
profile
• The wind flows around the building in a completely
different way.
• The form also represents the emergence of Shanghai as a
financial centre.
 Important strategies adopted for design
Three important strategies were adopted for the design:
i. He tower’s asymmetrical form
ii. Is tapering profile
iii. Its rounded corner

Green strategies:
i. Daylighting: the c]glass sin admits maximum daylight, reducing the need for
electrical lighting.
ii. Landscaping: one-third of the site is green space, with extensive landscaping
that cools the site.
iii. Wind turbines: exterior lighting for the tower will be powered by 270 wind
driven generators.
Shanghai towers sustainable strategies will reduce the building’s carbon
footprint by 34k metric tons per year.
Technical innovation: The tower has world’s fastest elevator with the speed
equivalent to 40mph. Structural efficiency: the simplifies mega-frame
structure is an economical approach. Counteracting sway: a tunes mass
damper near the top of the tower improves the occupant's comfort.
 STRUCTURAL SYSTEM
•The main part of the core-tube is a 30 m by 30 m square RC tube. The thickness
of the flange wall of the tube at the bottom is 1.2 m, and the thickness decreases
with the height of the tube and reduces to 0.5 m at the top. Similarly, the
thickness of the web wall decreases from 0.9 m at the bottom to 0.5 m at the top.
•According to the architectural functional requirements, the four corners of the
core-tube are gradually removed above Zone 5. Finally, the core-tube becomes X-
shaped at the top.
•The mega-column system consists of 12 shaped-steel reinforced concrete
columns with a maximum cross-sectional dimension of 5,300 mm×3,700 mm.
•8 mega-columns extend from the bottom to the top of the building, and the
section size gradually reduces to 2,400 mm×1,900 mm at the top.
•The remaining 4 columns are located at each corner and only extend from the
ground floor to Zone 5.
•The outrigger system, located at the mechanical stories, consists of circle trusses
and outriggers with a total height of 9.9 m. All of the components of the outriggers
are composed of H-shaped steel beams.
•Four element types are used in this model: the spatial beam elements used
for the external frames and outriggers, the multi-layer shell elements used for
the shear walls and the mega-columns, the truss elements used for the rebar
and the shaped-steels, and membrane elements for the floor slabs.
 Continu...
•Shanghai Tower asymmetry was designed in such way that wind loads were reduced by 24
percent, producing building materials and construction savings. The Tower design features
four pairs of super columns organized as nine cylindrical buildings stacked one a top
another.
•Shanghai Tower inner layer has a triangular exterior layer that constantly shapes the
building façade from all directions.
• The building contains a double skin façade that creates nine atrium sky gardens,
cylindrical buildings stacked one atop the other, that could be used as plazas and reunions.
Both skin facades are transparent establishing a connection between the building's interior
and Shanghai’s urban fabric.
•The tower features a unique “dual-skin” exterior, with the circular building wrapped in a
second, exterior skin, which spirals around it. The varying angles of the second skin create
21 landscaped public atriums, each 12 to 14 stories high, which will feature retail and
meeting spaces with sweeping views of the city.
•The dual-skin feature of the structure is important not only aesthetically but also
environmentally and financially.
•The skyscraper comprises nine cylindrical buildings stacked on top of each other, all
enclosed by a circular inner curtain wall and a triangular facade enveloping the entire
structure
• The tower is supported on 831 reinforced concrete bore piles sunk deep into the
ground.
•At its heart is a concrete core, of 30 sq. m. This itercts with the 4 super columns.
The core acts in concert with an outrigger and ‘super-column’ system, with
double-belt trusses that support the base of each of the nine vertical
neighbourhoods.
•The outrigger trusses and super columns derive stiffness from the concrete inner
building, producing an effective system for resisting wind and seismic loads for super
tall buildings. This approach has made for an easier and faster construction process,
meaning significant cost savings for the client.
•The tower’s form was refined using wind tunnel tests, which ultimately reduced
building wind loads by 24 per cent. The tests pinpointed a 120- degree rotation as
optimal for minimizing the wind loads.
•The result is a simpler and lighter structure with unprecedented transparency and
a 32 per cent reduction in costly materials
•To carry the load of the transparent glass skin, an innovative curtain
wall has been designed which is suspended from the mechanical floors
above and stabilized by a system of hoop rings and struts.
• The laminated glass panels filter the sun, wind and rain, while the inner
skin encloses the interior space with a unitized low-E coated insulating
glass curtain wall system with integral operable solar control devices.
• This double skin wall system takes advantage of the stack effect to
provide natural ventilation and cooling.
• The buffer areas between the inner and outer skins help to regulate
the environment as well as collect and recycle rain water
 BURJ KHALIFA

1.INTRODUCTION
2.STRUCTURAL AND ARCHITECTURAL SYSTEM
3.CONSTRUCTION OF BURJ KHALIFA
4. MONITORING PROGRAM,FIRE
SAFETY,SUPPLY SYSTEMS
 1.INTRODUCTION
• GENERAL INFORMATION
Location Burj Dubai Boulevard, Dubai, United
Arab
Height: 828 m

Number of floors 160+

Area of Tower: 280,000 sq.m residential and office space

and a Giorgio Armani
Total area: Tower+ Podium: 465,000 sq.m area

Steel rebars: 39,000 tonnes

Concrete used : 250,000 cu.m

 COMPARISON OF BURJ KHALIFA WITH OTHER
SKYSCRAPERS
• Burj Khalifa, the tallest man-made building in human history,
standing at 828m, is certainly a beautiful piece of artwork,
combined with the precision in mathematics and engineering.
Different from other skyscrapers:
• Burj Khalifa is characterised by an entirely distinctive facade,
with a pointed spire on the top of the building, accompanied
by 26 helical levels. Viewed from above, the building itself can
be easily distinguished by the special Y-shape of its cross-
sections, with the curves at each ends symbolising the onion
domes – an essential element in Islamic architecture.
Comparision of cross section of
different structures
Comparision of height of other well
known structures
 2.STRUCTURAL AND ARCHITECTURAL SYSTEM
2.1 Design inspiration
•The architecture features a triple-lobed footprint, an
abstraction of a desert flower named Hymenocallis.
• The tower is composed of three elements arranged around a
central core.
• Twenty-six helical levels decrease the cross section of the
tower incrementally as it spirals skyward.
• A Y-shaped floor plan maximizes views of the Arabian Gulf.
Viewed from the base or the air.
 2.2 Structural system description
•The tower superstructure of Burj Khalifa is designed as an all reinforced
concrete building with high performance concrete from the foundation
level to level 156, and is topped with a structural steel braced frame
from level 156 to the highest point of the tower.
•The structure of Burj Khalifa was designed to behave like a giant
column with cross sectional shape that is a reflection of the building
massing and profile.
•The structural system for the Burj Dubai can be described as a
“buttressed-core” and consists of high-performance concrete wall
construction
•The Y-shaped floor plan provides high-performance and maximizes
views of the Persian Gulf. This shape along with the upward spiraling
pattern of setbacks in the wings helped to reduce the wind forces on the
tower (the shape was determined based on extensive wind tunnel
tests). The structural system can be described as a “buttressed core”,
and consists of high performance concrete (HPC) wall construction.
.
•Corridor walls extend from the central core to near the end of
each wing, terminating in thickened hammer head walls.
•This central core provides the torsional resistance of the structure,
similar to a closed pipe or axle.
•These corridor walls and hammerhead walls behave similar to the
webs and flanges of a beam to resist the wind shears and
moments.
•At mechanical floors, outrigger walls are provided to link the
perimeter columns to the interior wall system, allowing the
perimeter columns to participate in the lateral load resistance of
the structure; hence, all of the vertical concrete is utilized to
support both gravity and lateral loads.
•The corridor walls extend from the central core up to the end of
wing, where they have thickened with hammer head walls. These
walls behave like the web and flanges of a beam to resist the wind
shears and moments. There are also a few perimeter columns
supporting flat plates at the ends . The perimeter columns are
connected at mechanical floors, through outrigger walls, thus
allowing the perimeter columns also to resist lateral wind loads.
The three storey height outriggers tie the tower at different
heights periodically. The tower does not contain any structural
transfers.