Burj Khalifah Dubai History The Burj Khalifah Dubai is the tallest building in the world.

The project of construction is start on 21 September 2004 and the exterior of the structure was completed on 1 October 2009. This skyscraper is officially established on 4 January 2010. Skidmore, Merrill and Owings are those who involved in the design of this building. Besides, these people were involved in the Sear Tower design located in Chicago too. The architecture of the tower inspired the Islamic heritage with Y shape cross sectional plan which symbolizes the Hymenocallis flower. Hyder is chose by Emaar Properties as electrical, mechanical and plumbing engineering consultant, SOM as architect and structural designer, while GHD as independent design checker.

Dimensions Total height of this skyscraper is 828 meters with total build up area of three million square feet of reinforced concrete. Total of 4000 tons of steel was consumed in this skyscraper with the highest height of 200 meters.

Structural Features The interior of the building was designed with the Y shaped wing walls with the buttressed core in its center. There are six sided hexagonal central core is buttressed by the other wing shear walls to form a single system. Wing shear walls is extended along the three wings of the building respectively and ended with the hammerhead wall. The combination of the wing shear walls with the hammerhead wall act like a T beam with web (wing shear wall) and flanges (hammerhead wall). This combination can resist the high bending due to lateral load. Besides, each wing consist of core and perimeter columns. The floor area is decreasing in the direction towards its height to form a spiral tower. The interconnecting floor systems and linked beams in the interaction between the cross walls and main wing which extend the shear walls cause the individual stiffness of the walls to play a role as a composite with floor and beams hold by
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concrete cores in each wing. This contributes to the lateral and torsional stiffness of the tower in any direction. Furthermore, the setback in spiral arrangement is to confuse the wind as wind vortices do not develop completely as the wind encounters irregular arrangement of the skyscraper. Total of twenty seven different size of floors in the direction ascending up toward the skyscraper. Normally column line will terminate on the beam when the size of floor is change. However, column lines in this building discontinuous on the beams means the column rest on the beam when the floor size is reduce, but column discontinuous on the top of load bearing walls below. In order to increase the lateral stiffness of the structure, additional stiffness is applied throughout the concrete outrigger wall structures at each 30 storey interval. Besides, the purpose of outriggers is to reduce the overturning moment of the central core of the building if the core alone to act as cantilever. These outriggers will transfer the overturning moment to outer perimeter columns due to the interconnection within the outrigger, core and perimeter columns. Cannot deny that the outriggers play a role to ensure gravity load distributes evenly through tieup of vertical load carrying elements so act to minimize the differential creep movements. This skyscraper is constructed using diagonal braced system to enhance the resistance towards gravity, seismic, wind and fatigue which based to the requirements of AISC Load and Resistance Facto Design Specification for Structural Steel Buildings (1999).

Foundation System Burj Khalifah Dubais foundation is constructed with pile support raft foundation where the raft is made from Self Consolidation Concrete (SCC) located in three lifts of total 3.7m thick. Besides, the piles form a set of 194 bored caisson piles which each of it has diameter of 1.5m and 43m long. The soil beneath the building consists of silt-formed calcite type of rocks. Bored caisson piles provide ultimate skin friction of 250 to 350 kPa to the underlying skin.

Sustainable Design Features The exterior wall of the building is made from cladding of reflective glazing with aluminum and textured stainless steel spandrel panels and stainless steel vertical tubular fins. This cladding is insulated with low-emissivity glass to prevent the heat from the direct sunlight penetrate into the interior of the building, so make the condition of interior cool. Therefore, this can reduce the consumption of more electrical energy in air conditioning facilities in desert clmate. Other than that, solar panels is used to heat up about 140, 000 litres of water per day. Hence this reduce the water consumption cost. Besides, solar powered water save the energy of 3,200 kilowatts per day. In term of energy, it save 690MWh of energy per annum. Additional, this skyscraper consists of collecting condensate from air conditioners. Therefore, it help to reduce the municipal portable water consumption.

Petronas Twin Towers History In 1990, Petronas Twin Towers was proposed by Datuk Seri Datuk Dr. Mahathir Mohamed, the prime minister of Malaysia. This project is part of the Vision 2020. It is the main point of the Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) to link the Kual Lumpur City Center to KLIA. These towers will represent Malaysia country and as an object introduce Malaysia to other countries in the world. Besides, it is a symbol of success, modernization and status. The architectural firm involved in the towers design was an overseas Cesar Pelli and Associates. Petronas Twin Towers symbolized Islamic heritage. This is shown in plan view of each floor by two squares where one square is rotated in 45 degree in relative with another square and superimposed with each other with common center with semicircular in-fills in between the squares the geometrical arrangement.

Dimensions Two main towers with two lower bustles attached to each tower respectively. Petronas twin towers consist of 88 storeys with total high of 452 meters and total areas of 218, 000 square meters of floor space. In 1996, this tower is the tallest tower in the world because it beat Sears Towers by 10.9m. Other than the towers itself, the obvious structural members of Petronas twin towers are the sky bridge and the pinnacle. The length of the sky bridge is 58.4 meters long with weights of 750 tonnes. Four pieces of inclined struts with each of 42.6 meters long is used to allow the movement of the bridge.

Structural Feature Steel and concrete are the main construction materials used to construct these towers. Other than the main structural components, each tower composes of: Sixteen circular columns around the perimeter of the tower and twelve bustle columns around the perimeter of the bustle as shown in Figure 2 in Appendix.
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Metal deck slab floors. Ring Beams around the bustles and main tower. Core wall system is used in its center of the towers used to lift cores and to resist lateral wind loads on the towers. Outrigger braced beans Sky bridge Pinnacle

The stability of Petronas twin towers is mainly depend on its heavy concrete self weight to reduce the sway motion due to the lateral wind load. Concrete has its inherent damping which can resist the sway movement of the cantilever towers. The perimeter of the columns change in height from 2.4 meter to 1.2 meter with only five size increments. The size of the columns decreased ascending the tower towards to pinnacle. Besides, the compressive strengths of the concretes in the columns is vary with height from 30MPa at the top to 80MPa at the bottom of the building. Besides, twelve bustle columns in the mini tower attached to the primary tower. When the building reaches floor levels of 60, the floor area is reduced. Floor area is further reduced at floor level of 73 and 82. Hence, the diameter of the towers is gradually reduced as shown by its faade. In order facilitate the setback sloped/stepped columns are used with slope of 1 horizontal to 6 vertical and gradually shifted inwards the building. Invisible outrigger trusses are protruding from the central core in the East-West direction at levels 38 and 40. The stiffness of the towers is enhanced by tie the interior core with the external frame. Besides, core wall play a main role to restraint against the lateral load and hence, contribute to the stiffness of the tower. The core wall used has a dimension of 23 by 23 meter square section to 19 x 22 meter in four steps with the outer wall being 750 to 350 mm thisk and internal walls 350 mm thick in constant. There is a webs composed of two solid walls within the core walls running North-South and West-East enhance the stiffness of the cantilever vertical beam. As the compressive strength of the columns, compressive strength of core walls is change from 40MPa at the top of the building to 80MPa towards the base of the building. Figure 2 show the plan layout of the core wall.
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Sky bridge was constructed adding a unique touch to a quintessential architectural and engineering marvel. The most challenging task in placing the sky bridge is the different movements of the tower. Therefore, inverted V struts which extend an angle of 650 from its support at level with a total of four struts to support the two span continuous bridge girders at level of forty one. Spherical bearings/rotational pins are used to allow the movement of the bridge under different movements of the towers. at each leg of the struts and above the crown of the arch of the struts. Figure 3 show the ball bearing belonging to the sky bridge of the Petronas Twin Towers.

Foundation System The foundation of these towers is considered as one of the deepest foundation in the world. The soil strata beneath the towers composed of calcitic and dolomite marble and limestone. Besides, a lot of cavities are found in the limestone due to the chemical weathering process. Above of this limestone there were residual soils. Steep dipping limestone bedrock with irregular bedrock depths make the engineers facing problems in designing its foundation and the use of socketed end bearing piles on the bedrock was not possible because it will move the entire towers to 60 meters from its original location. Therefore, concrete mat foundation system with thickness of 4.5 meters was used on friction piles (i.e. barrettes) in the depth varies from 40 to 105 meters in order to control the settlement. 104 rectangular friction piles were used with dimension of 1.2 meter to 2.8 meters. Basically, the strength of the piles were developed from its cohesion and friction of the pile barrettes. Figure 6 show the geological condition below the petronas towers.

Sustainable Design Features High strength fly ash concrete is used for its structural members and its mat foundation system. Fly ash concrete have relatively lower weight to volume ratio compared with ordinary concrete. Fly ash concrete cost lower than ordinary concrete too. The steel reinforcement in the foundation is made from the recycled steel. Besides, the pinnacle is made from stainless steel with reduce the maintenance cost in the future.
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Sears Tower History When the company of Sear, Roebuck and Co. expand and growth as a mail order business in the world by 1906 and 1969, they proposed to build the Sears tower to accommodate the expansion of the company. Sears tower has two and four million square feet with floor area of 110, 000 square feet per department. The design of this tower was took over by the structural engineering and architectural firm Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (SOM). One of the engineer from SOM, which is Fazlur Rahman Khan proposed a ingenious structural system to fulfill the high of the tower. He suggest the bundled tube structure which save the cost of $10 millions in compared with the pre-existing structural systems. Other name for Sears tower is called Willis tower. This tower consists of total 110 storeys.

Dimensions Bundled tube structural system was adopted in this building with nine square plans with each of 75 inch x 75 inch in dimension. The tube is discontinuous at the particular heights ascending the building. besides, columns are placed around the perimeter of the building at the spacing of 15 feet centers to centers. Figure 8 show the shape of square plans in the bundled tubes. At the cut off point of the bottom tubes, nine bundled tubes were rise up to floor 50 and end up at the southeast and northwest tubes. The remaining bundled tubes continue raise with the northeast and southwest tubes end at floor 66. At floor 90, the north, east and south bundled tubes start to end remaining two tubes continue to rise until floor 108. This building has a total height of 527 meters including the antenna spire.

Structural Features Prefabricated structural steel elements called as Christmas tree were used in the construction of this building in order to save the cost of construction because about 95% of the welding is excluded and increase the speed of construction works too. This prefabricated units consist of
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two storey columns with half length beams welded on either side of the column welded together offsite. The prefabricated columns with its center to center spacing allow the square plane of the bundled tubes to discontinuous at specific heights. The closely spaced columns and deep spandrel beams which connected strongly throughout their external frame form the walls of the tubes. The internal framed tube lines where interior beams and columns act as an interior web that redistributes column axial forces cause by shear lag experienced in a regular singular framed tube. Due to the building act as one unit, shear lag is happen during the lateral wind load act onto the building and cause in-plane distortions in the direction of wind. Therefore, sections in the transverse direction of bending will fail due to the behavior of shear lag because columns subjected to different bending. Columns in the middle of building will subjected to larger axial load compared with the columns at the sides of the building. the bundled system give additional stiffness throughout the interaction between the interior framing and other tubes through trussed connections, mainly in the belt trusses at the drop off points of the tubes which appear as black horizontal bands on the faade as shown in Figure 8. Belt truss play an important role to give all the connecting tubes to act as a whole hence increase its lateral stiffness. The two tubes starting at the floor 50 offset the gravity load and stressed the load at one side of the building. Therefore, belt trusses are used to improve the distribution of gravity loads to be more evenly to the floors below floor 50. Hence, decrease the differential settlement and overturning moments in the soil.

Foundation System Caisson piles were used in its foundation system. Total of 114 circular caisson piles is drive into the soil strata and rest on the bedrock. Starting the casings of caisson piles were drive into the soil, drilling and auguring activities were performed to displace the soil out from the surface of soil, then install the steel reinforcement bars into the casing. Finally cast the concrete into it.

Sustainable Design Features Basically there are no sustainable facilities in the building. Due to the large consumption of electricity, some of the windows on the south side of the floor 56 were installed photovoltaic glass modules. Besides, heating and building cooling systems were install in the building too. Other than that such as automatic lighting system which can detect the daylight and night in order to save the electricity, electricity saving escalators which are able to stop operating if nobody use it, advance mechanical systems and elevators contributed to the energy saving of 68 million kilowatt hours per year.

The Trump International Tower and Hotel History Architect who involved in design of The Trump International Tower and Hotel were Adrian Smith of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill. Now this building is the number eight tallest building in the world. It was build at the north side of Chicago River.

Dimensions This tower has a total height of 345.6 meters. If including spire, its height is up to 415.1 meters. This tower consist of a total of 92 storeys. Concrete core system with different building set back on three floors with outrigger was adopted in this building.

Structural System The term of floor system, this tower consist of maximum 9.1 meters span of slab with thickness of 230 mm. There is no deep external spandrel beams to contribute to the load transfer from outriggers to external columns. Besides, minimum amount of large perimeter round the columns and at the bottom of the building the columns can support 14 000kips of the load. Therefore, blocking of the panoramic views can be avoided. Setback occurred at two levels which is at floor 16 and floor 51 to avoid the buildup of wind vortices to reduce the wind load on the structure system. Other than that, two C shaped and four I shaped concrete core walls located in the North-South direction in the building and reduce ascending the building to two I shaped walls at floor 51. The flanges of the core walls (both I and C) are 1.2 meters in thick and thickness of webs are 18 inches. Besides, the outrigger structures compose of reinforced concrete wall beams which extend from the flanges of the core walls with 1.7 meters in wide and 5.3 meter in deep to reduce the overturning of the building and enhance the stiffness of the tower too. Furthermore, outriggers serve as transfer girders in the circumstance where the upper column of the building terminate at the setback. The transfer girders at floor 16 create interior column free car park spaces as the transfer girders at each floor transfer loads and tie up to the external
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perimeter mega columns. At the mechanical floors at the setback, outriggers create large views to be unobstructed by large outrigger beams/walls. The belt trusses contribute to the minimizing of the differential elongation and shortening of columns.

Foundation System The soil strata is found to have 10 to 20 feet of sand underlain by soft Chicago blue clay. Unweathered limestone serves as the bedrock with compressive strength of 10000 to 20000 psi. Due to the proposed caisson piles interferes with the existing belled piles at there. Therefore, existing bell had to be cut by coring bucket before can construct the proposed foundation system. Self Consolidating Concrete (SCC) was used to construct the foundation. Before place the mat, 10 feet caisson holes were drilled through the underlaying clay, boulder then finally reach the bedrock at 34 meters deep. Drilling process is continuous into 1.8 meters further into the limestone bedrock in order to interlock the pile into the bedrock layer. This foundation composed of a concrete mat which is constructed through a 22 hour continuous pouring of SCC over the reinforcing cage. Total of 3, 800 cubic meters of concrete of 69 MPa compressive strength of SCC was used over plan dimension of 200 x 60 feet to tie the core caissons together.

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Jin Mao Tower History The owner of this tower is China Jin Mao Group Co. Ltd. It was established on August 28, [Link] Smith of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill LLP from Chicago involved in the design of Jin Mao tower. The architecture of the building symbolizes prosperity and auspicious number of eight and reflects the Chinese heritage with its tiered pagoda look. Octagonal concrete shear core wall was used in the central core of the tower are surrounded by eight built up steel columns. This tower composed of 88 storeys.

Dimensions Total height of the building is 412 meters. a low rise podium was attached to the main tower with total area of the entire building of three million square feet. The first 50 storieys were used for office space which has a central concrete core wall with internal webs. About 2.7 meters of residential height in each floor (from floor to ceiling). The floor is free from the columns. Another 38 storeys are reserved for the hotel use where is free of internal webs in the core walls.

Structural Features The outriggers interconnected between the concrete core and the composite exterior mega columns reduce the lateral load moments in the core and transfers these moments to the composite columns. Central reinforced concrete core shear wall is one of the important structural features in Jin Mao Tower. This wall have a depth of 27 meters which forms centerline to centerline of flanges with flanges between 850 mm thick at the bottom near the foundations and 450 mm near the top of the building. A prototype model of the tower has been subjected to aero elasticity studies in which the accelerations of the top floor is evaluated using a 1.5% structural damping. Based on the wind
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tunnel studies, the accelerations for a 10 year return period was in the acceptable range of 15-20 milli gs which indicates the passive damping of the building through outriggers, core walls, mass and stiffness were sufficient to put the building in a motionless perceived state by occupants. With regards to resistance against seismic loads, all lateral load resisting structures were designed to withstand the forces generated from the Chinese Code.

Foundation System The foundation system of this tower is use of high capacity structural steel pipe piles. The length of the individual piles is 65 meters with diameter of 0.91 meters and with 750 ton capacity with an arrangement of 2.7 meters centers around the towers core and composite mega columns whereas elsewhere the spacing is 3 meter centers. The depth of pile drived into the sand layer is 78.5 meters. Concrete of grade C50 was used to construct concrete mat with 4 meters thick.

Sustainable Design Features Advanced glass curtain wall with low emissivity of varying densities was used on the exterior walls of the tower to minimize the sunlight on the building faade to keep the interior of the building cooler.

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References 1. (n.d.) Burj Dubai (Khalifa)-Structural System. Retrieved on March 14, 2012 from [Link] 2. (n.d.) Retrieved on March 14, 2012 from [Link] 3. (n.d.) Philosophy of Structural Engineering for the Burj Khalifa (Dubai) Tower. Retrieved on March, 14, 2012 from

[Link] 4. Ali, M.M, Kyoung, S.M. (2007) Structural Development in Tall Buildings: Current Trends and
Future Prospects, Architectural Science Review.
Volume 50.3, pp 205-223

5. Jamal, H. (n.d.) Design, Construction & Structural Details of Burj Dubai Khalifa Tallest Skyscraper. EngPedia. Retrieved on March, 14, 2012 from

[Link] 6. (n.d.) Burj Khalifa. World Buildings Directory Online Database. Retrieved on March, 14, 2012 from [Link] 7. Buildings - Petronas Twin Towers at Kuala Lumpur City Center, The Structural Design of Tall Buildings, Vol. 6, 245-262 8. Pridmore, J. (2002) Sears Tower- A Building Book from the Chicago Architecture Foundation Pomegranate Publications, California. 9. Adams, N. & Skidmore, O.&.M. (2007), Skidmore, Owings & Merrill : SOM since 1936, Phaidon Press, Milan; London, pp.252 10. Blanc, A., McEvoy, M., Plank, R. (1993) Architecture and Constriction in Steel, The Steel Construction Institute, E & FN Spon, London, United Kingdom. 11. Taranath, B. S. (2012) Structural Analysis and Design of Tall Buildings: Steel and Composite Construction, CRC Press, Taylor and Francis Group, Northwest Washington D.C. pp.68-70, 467-470. 12. (June, 25th 2009). Sears Tower Slated for $350M Sustainability Makeover, Environmental leader - Environmetal and Energy Management News. Retrieved on March, 18, 2012 from [Link]

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13. Shuldiner, H. (March 1972) Popular Science pp.72-74. 14. [Link] age=en-GB 15. (n.d.) Jin Mao Group Co. Ltd. Retrieved on March, 23, 2012 from

[Link] 16. Sarkisian, M., Mathias, N. Long, E., Mazeika, A, Gordon, J., Chakar, J. (2006, May) Jin Mao Towers Influence on Chinas New Innovative Buildings. Paper presented at Shanghai International Seminar of Design and Construction Technologies of Super High Rise Buildings, Shanghai, China. 17. Smith, A.D., Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (2007) The architecture of Adrian Smith, SOM- Towards s Sustainable Future, Images Publishing Group, Victoria, Australia. 18. Tamboli, A., Joseph, L., Vadnere, U., Xu, X. (2008, March) Tall Buildings: Sustainable Design Opportunities. Paper presented at CTBUH 8th World Congress, Dubai.

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Appendix

Hexagonal buttressed core

Wing shear walls terminating with hammerhead walls

Figure 1: Burj al Khalifa tower and Y shaped tower plan which symbolizing the flower Hymenocallis (after [Link], n.d.)

Figure 2: Core walls of main tower and bustle (after Thornton et al., 1997)

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Figure 3: Spherical Bearings of Sky bridges Support

Figure 4: Stepped column arrangement at setback of towers (after Thornton et al., 1997)

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Figure 5: Tower 1 Foundation- Petronas Twin Towers (after Tamboli et al, 2008.)

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Figure 6: Geological condition below Petronas Towers (after Baker, 2006)

Figure 7: Sky bridge (after [Link] LIBRARY, n.d.)

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Figure 8: Bundled structural form of Sears Tower

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Figure 9: Tower Structural system and framing plan (after Skidmore, Owings and Merrill LLP, 2006)

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Figure 10: Tower Outrigger Details (after Skidmore, Owings and Merrill LLP, 2006)

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