Structural design challenges of Taipei 101
The Prelude
Taipei 101 is a 101 storey building in Taipei city and was the world’s tallest building after its completion. The total height of the building is 508m with a base plan area of 45.3m × 45.3m. The building has commercial & recreational usage and is made of high strength steel and M70 concrete.
The Challenge
Taipei is a seismically active region with a history of great typhoons too. Thus the design of Taipei 101 was a big challenge for the designers as the design for wind and earthquake have contradicting stiffness requirements. The building needs to exhibit immense stiffness to any lateral sway in case of a wind; whereas it need not be too stiff to attract huge amounts of seismic forces. This proved to be a major brainstorming for the engineers as such a task was never achieved at such a large scale.
The Breakthrough
The main lateral resisting system of Taipei 101 consists of moment resisting perimeter columns connected to concrete cores with the help of outriggers at MEP levels.
A structural modification in form of Sawtooth treatment to the corners was carried out in Taipei 101. This sawtooth treatment reduced the formation of the eddies around the corner and thus reduced the wind induced acceleration in the building. Another breakthrough solution that was introduced was the Tuned Mass Damper. Tuned mass Damper uses the building motion in one direction, to push or pull a fixed mass attached with dashpots in opposite to provide the required damping to reduce the accelerations in the building. Also this tuned mass damper was tuned such that it will only be effective for wind loads, in case of any (sudden) seismic excitation the dashpots will sense a jerk and dashpots will get locked, thus no additional damping will be provided in case of any seismic event.
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